Everything Has a Price
by TheGirlWithFarTooManyIdeas
Summary: Ancient Runes are a language of invocation, of summoning, of creation. A golem lay buried in a park near Little Whinging, the remnant of the only Potter to become a Dark Lord, when a bleeding Christina Potter lashes back against her cousin. Upon discovering her mother's trunk, full of lost, contraband magic, Christina goes seeking dangerous heights...fem!Ravenclaw!Harry
1. Chapter 1

**Everything Has a Price**

 _ **University: Hey. Take a seat, the lecture's starting soon. Are you new? You look so nervous. Don't worry, if you've charged your phone you're allowed to record for notes. Don't forget to check Moodle, that's where they're posting the assignments...you did already know that, didn't you?**_

 ** _Me: (hides under bed, whining in stress) Meeep..._**

 ** _University: Well, you aren't here all day. When you've done some work, try writing something. It may soothe your nerves._**

 ** _Me: (grabs computer) (opens it) (is tackled by a plot bunny, knocking me onto the floor) Okay! Okay! Whatever calms my nerves..._**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.**

 **Prologue: The Golem**

" _When night came...I quitted my retreat and wandered in the wood; and now, no longer restrained by a fear of discovery, I gave vent to my anguish in fearful howlings..."_

The little girl brushed her fingers over the pages, careful not to press on the tear stains from the first time she had read this passage. "Why couldn't you love him, Victor?" She asked sadly. "You knew when you stitched him together from bloody bits and pieces that he wasn't going to be pretty. All he wanted was your love. Why was that so hard to give? Why did you hate something you fashioned with your own hands, created from your heart?"

Delicately she closed the book – it was old, and worn, and a gift from the school librarian. It was the only true gift she'd ever received in the eight years of her life, and she treated it with as much care, if not more, than she showed herself.

Some might find it remarkable that such a young child could read and absorb a text as old and heavy as Frankenstein. But this was Privet Drive, a horribly ordinary, boring little hamlet where anything extraordinary was quickly shunned in favour of the status quo. That which was not destroyed was ignored, because those who lived there did not want to acknowledge the inadequacy of their lives or how little value their 'hard earned' livelihoods truly possessed. The Dream, the white picket fence with a family and a dog, so strived for that some people sold their souls for the image but not the happiness that it invoked, leaving them jealous of all those who possessed something of value.

She was a brilliant girl, her mind incredibly sharp – she had been reading non-picture books at four and now she devoured old texts with happiness and enthusiasm; perhaps it was equal parts eagerness and hope that, if she filled herself up with knowledge the void where the lack of love in her life would no longer exist. Or failing that, it would no longer cause her pain, because she had solace in knowing things that no one else did.

Frankenstein was the text she loved, not merely as a repository of knowledge, but a _story._ It was such a sad, _sad_ story, but she had known much of sadness, so she felt an intimate connection to it. Many times in her sleep she would converse with Victor and his Creation – it felt so mean spirited that even the text referred to it as a monster, for surely it had not become a monster until that moniker had been forced upon it? - to the point where she felt as if they were her true friends, her only friends in this world.

 _Of course,_ she told no one of these 'conversations', or of her precious book. Her _aunt_ and _uncle,_ as much as they could be called that when they forced her to sleep in the boot cupboard under the stairwell, already found her to be an aberration, her existence a crime against them. To know how wise she was, even as they stifled her and refused to give her contact with the outside world, would only increase her unnatural nature in their eyes and the eyes of their stagnant community. So her curiosity was not welcomed, her desires hidden and silent. She knew that no one would find joy in her capabilities or what she may be capable of in time.

But the Creature understood her, sat with her in her sleep, shared his sorrow with hers. So she took their cruelty and their exclusion with sorrowful acceptance, not knowing that in other places she would be looked upon with awe, glorified and admired for what she was rather than shunned and feared.

Yes, there was _fear,_ like the fear of the Creature. Her aunt thought she didn't know. But she was a wise girl, wise, and she _saw_ it in her eyes when the pots floated through the air to the sink, when her hair grew back in seconds after being held down while it was shorn to her scalp. She was odd and powerful and created by something the woman and her husband _did not understand,_ so she might as well have been stitched up from body parts herself.

Sometimes she wondered if her parents had created her to be wise; the parents that had died when she was so little. Died in the room, in the light of the Green. Oh? No, she did not believe the story her _aunt_ and _uncle_ had trotted out the first time she had gathered the courage to ask them what had become of her parents. She had _seen_ it...the Green, and the Man in Black.

Her mother's Blood allowed her to see, to understand...

 _Chrissy..._

The memory would start that way; a beautiful older woman whispering her name. She giggled, reaching up for her mother. The woman smiled, a terrible, pained smile, and smeared a hot liquid across her forehead and across her chest near her heart. She could remember the smell...drying blood had a very distinct smell.

 _Chrissy,listen...mommy loves you...daddy loves you...Chrissy be safe...be strong..._

Chrissy. That was her name, not girl or freak or Monster. Christina Lily Potter. Sometimes that was hard to remember...after all...

"GIRL!" A massive thudding, like a tree limb smacking the building in a storm, struck against the door of the cupboard. She jumped, quickly hiding her treasure in the dark crevice that had protected it so many times before. "GIRL, GET UP!"

...It wasn't as if anyone else here called her by that name.

"Yes uncle. I'm coming, uncle. What do you want for breakfast today?" She asked, pulling her fingers through her red hair hoping to pull out as many knots as she could. Her aunt hated it when she didn't look as neat as possible, never mind that she wasn't allowed a hairbrush or new clothes. No, she had to look presentable.

"Bacon and eggs, girl. It's Monday! What blasted else do we eat?" Her uncle fumbled with the lock as he spoke, opening it moments later. She got to her knees, preparing to go out; he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her, causing her to fall to the floor before regaining her sense of balance.

"Yes, of course uncle."

He always talked to her as if she were stupid. But if she didn't ask, he would shout at her for assuming, and if she'd actually started the meal before he arbitrarily decided he wanted something else, he'd smack her for 'wasting good food'. Perhaps he believed that if he kept talking that way, she would eventually believe she was stupid.

Well, Christina would never believe she was dumber than someone who didn't know how to read Frankenstein.

Breakfast was typical; Christina learned that if she made more food than Dudley would eat (which was a mean feat to do without getting noticed, given that Dudley was a bottomless pit who ate half his body weight whenever possible), she would be able to eat enough scraps afterwards to feel full. Aunt Petunia would occasionally shriek at her either not to burn anything or to step up the pace, ignoring that those were often contradictory. She always said, "Yes ma'am.", while continuing her work.

Her aunt preferred 'ma'am'. It made her feel important.

There were a lot of little tricks Christina had learned, to smooth or soften her _family_ whenever they started to gear up at her. Flattery was the best, for both the giraffe woman and for her uncle. The more inflated his ego was, the more he tolerated her – when he felt big enough that it didn't matter he was saddled with an unnatural freak of a niece since her irresponsible parents died in a drinking and driving accident.

She did not allow the lie to bother her anymore. It did once, when she realized it first, but she wasn't allowed to hold on to indignation in this house. She _knew_ the truth, if not the proper context for it, so the words of the ignorant had no meaning.

Dudley was...less easy to handle than his parents. Usually, if he got what he wanted he'd go away. However, often what he wanted was some physical torment to inflict on Christina – whether it was chasing and beating her with his friends, or pulling/cutting her hair, taking her food, leaving her behind when he went to the park or on the amusement rides. Thus, Christina was forced to pick and choose what would be the least painful way of partially satisfying him. After all, if Dudley got hurt, she'd be lucky if she could leave the cupboard in weeks...

She had guessed the dosage right, again. Dudley wolfed through five strips but left the last one and the last scrambled egg untouched; he shoved his plate at her and ran off towards the door – Piers and his other horrid friends often came to his house before they went to school. That way they could chase Christina on the way there – less likely to get caught by the teachers that way. Christina took the plate to the sink, quickly eating the remaining food as she went.

Christina always went to school only for the second half of the day; her aunt had blamed this on a 'sickness' of some sort. Really, it was so people had as little exposure to her as possible. Her aunt didn't want anyone to know about the _things that happened._

She had no other word for them – yet. The strange things, the inexplicable things, all that happened around her. A teleported car. The hair that grew back immediately. Flying to the school rooftop. Doors unlocking on their own.

Oh, how she wished she knew _anything_ about it! Then maybe she could control it, do things with it, _create_ things with it...

"GIRL! Are you _deaf_? The weeding! Get to it!"

And she was daydreaming. Daydreaming was _bad,_ especially when she had chores to do. "Yes ma'am!" She abandoned the dishes to drip dry, pulling the plug as she hurried into the back yard. The chores were the other reason she was only in school half time.

She didn't mind the weeding, or tending to the garden in general. She loved helping things grow; it was fascinating to watch vines wind around the back of the house, roses grow despite the cold, and above all she liked helping them grow. It felt like she was their mother, and she had a sense that they appreciated everything she did for them. She created the arrangements in the back yard...

...just like she would fish Dudley's crumbled up, failed exams out of the recycling bin, tear them into strips, and fold them into origami and other such designs. Or she would draw, with broken crayons carefully stolen from Dudley's second bedroom. She had so many beautiful, sprawling designs in her tiny bedroom, little cats and birds in folded figures, hidden in crevices or in shadows or below the tiny, lumpy cot she called her bed.

The desire for creation was strong...so strong. If only she had clay. Or stone. Or metal, steel and iron and bronze. Or, or, or... _more._ More _anything_.

It drove her to madness, how little she had to forge with. That was the one thing she truly resented. She hated how she was deprived, confined, suppressed. She wanted to _forge, to create..._ she wanted to learn more, then create new knowledge for others to find! She knew she could do it if they would only _let_ her...but to allow such things would allow others to see, to know the abnormal, unnatural girl who created them...

She wanted to be Victor, she wanted to bring her origami to life. She wanted a car that would speak to her (sometimes she could watch bits and pieces of a movie over Dudley's shoulder from her cupboard), she wanted to raise blood red roses and daisies from the pages she painted them on. She wanted to create a friend, a friend of stone and steel who could break Dudley's cruel hands just by standing and letting the stupid chit strike him, a friend that would protect her from anything, a friend who would worship her and never leave her side.

It would not be one sided! She would love her creations, what she shaped and formed with her hands and her heart. She would not flee from them as Victor had, for was she not herself an aberration? She would give them all the love that she had that no one else had wanted...

 ****~Time Skip~****

Stolen...Dudley had stolen her painting and passed it off as his! Even shearing off her hair had not caused her to hate him so. It felt like a violation. She had worked so hard on it, put a little bit of herself into the paint and the soft edges of the lilies she had drawn, and he had taken it from her and claimed that _he_ had made it...he wasn't capable, he couldn't even draw convincing stick figures, the teachers knew that from the suspicious looks they gave him yet not one of them properly called him out. It made her so furiously angry.

The window that exploded had been blamed on punks from the alleyways; the glass shards all hit Dudley leaving him bloody and crying and they had to take him to the hospital to get stitches because his hands were so messed up.

Her aunt and uncle blamed her of course, but she didn't care, didn't care about the familiar darkness and cramped space of the cupboard as long as Dudley never made the catastrophic mistake of trying to claim something of _hers_ again. Hours later, she still seethed on the injustice, the indignity – how _dare_ he? He had so much, things that were given to him none of which he had built with his own hands, but no he was never ever satisfied, so he took from _her_ who had almost _nothing_ because of him? And not merely some decorative thing someone else had made that she had bought, but something she had _made,_ something she had _given birth to?_ That insufferable, unforgivable little monster!

No, no, not just a monster, the Creature had been sympathetic, had been worthy of pity, and she mouthed a silent apology to him for using the name he had been given for _Dudley_ , who didn't deserve the association. Being a _monster_ implied that Dudley actually put _effort_ into it, actually tried to mould himself into something, rather than just _doing_ it because he _could_ and it was _easy..._ to _avoid_ creating anything of his own!

 _Useless, useless, useless cousin. Were you_ jealous? _Could you not_ stand _for people to see that I had made something beautiful while you couldn't be arsed to lift your fingers for long enough to make something similar?_

The thought was an amazing epiphany. It was so hard to imagine Dudley being _jealous_ of her, when he was so happy in his worthless, petty mediocrity. He could have created something himself but no he didn't want to bother, didn't want to add anything. How could somebody be so _empty?_ So devoid of any purpose?

The teachers would have been bewildered by how deeply furious this had made Christina.

 _I will never, ever forgive him,_ she thought darkly, squeezing one of her crayons until it broke. Instantly she felt bad, and placed the broken pieces on the floor while holding her hand over them. There was a soft glow and the shattered fragments glued themselves back together. Christina gave a tiny smile at her success, wishing once again that she knew anything concrete about these powers she possessed. She was certain her aunt knew something, it was always her aunt who reacted first when something _inexplicable_ happened. It made her uncle angry sure but it made her aunt angry most of all.

Christina wasn't just intelligent, she was also wise – some people didn't realize those things didn't go hand in hand. Being smart did not make one wise; all the books in the world could not allow one to predict how people thought and reacted. But Christina could, eerily, it was just one more thing that made this little neighbourhood afraid of her; she could look at them and see all their darkest secrets. They shunned her so she would not expose them; the gambling, the cheating, the thefts, she knew all about them...and they _knew_ she knew, because her emerald green eyes were hard and piercing and tore through all the deceptions to reach the heart.

She knew her aunt resented her because she did not _have_ the special ability that she did. That her aunt had always both wished for and resented said special ability. She just did not know _why_ , she was not quite old enough or worldly enough to be able to put all the pieces together. She had the pieces themselves, though, and she could guess that her mother had once possessed these abilities as well. Perhaps her grandparents, who died before she was born, had favoured her mother because of them, leaving her aunt behind? Perhaps her aunt blamed the abilities for what had befallen their family, including the loss of her parents? She could not know until she forced the knowledge from the woman herself, but the punishments that would probably await her for such a line of questioning kept her tongue quiet and contemplative.

 _It's alright,_ she silently told the painted lilies, which was silly since they were all the way at school – hung proudly in a cabinet by the impressed teachers, who would know very soon who's it _really_ was. Dudley was such an imbecile for thinking his weak deception would last... _I have not abandoned you. I will sign my name on you tomorrow when I get there, and I will always impart a little bit of me in you so you are not alone. You are MINE and I will never forsake you._

Christina shook her head, she was six days into her month long 'punishment' (she was only allowed out of the cupboard to use the washroom, the Dursleys didn't want the house to stink after all, or to go to school because they didn't want the teachers to ask questions) and her skin was pale as a corpse for lack of sunlight. It hurt to go outside sometimes, but such was the life of a creator; they were always shut up in their labs so perhaps she should thank her _family_ for preparing her for that?

She didn't really want to, she knew she was not learning nearly as much as she could shut up in this tiny place. She knew they were keeping her from knowledge and that enraged her. She wished that someday they would be punished for treating her this way, for stifling her, for keeping the one thing she ever wanted out of her grasp.

 _Along with love. But Christina believed that love was created, not intrinsic, not a virtue - so she associated it not with people, but with her craft._

She took one of her last papers – she would have to get more from school tomorrow, there was always leftover coloured craft paper in the art room – and began to fold it with practised hands. However, she was so distracted by her angry thoughts that she gave herself a deep paper cut. Wincing, she pulled away, but not before leaving a few drops of blood on the half finished origami bird.

Sucking on her finger, Christina willed a spark of magic through it to clean and heal the wound (her family never treated her unless it was serious). The blood droplets sank down into the 'heart' of the half completed bird, seemingly glowing in the low light of the pathetic light bulb that lit her abode. She was about to give her work up, thinking it damaged, but something stopped her, an instinct. Instead she continued on her folding until it was done, fixing the beak and staring at it.

She felt a gentle pulse from her magic...and the bird shivered and flapped its wings, a light red pulse spreading from its' 'heart'. She gasped in ecstatic awe, barely remembering to slap a hand over her mouth to muffle her jubilation; it was late at night and her _family_ hated being disturbed not that any of that mattered in that moment. The bird rose from her hand, completely animated, and began to fly in circles around the small enclosure, the soft red light continuing to emanate from it.

She wanted to laugh; tears streamed down her face. Good tears, warm tears, tears she welcomed. Her one wish had come true, the _inexplicable_ had given it to her. She watched the bird fly around her, and when she held out a trembling hand it came to alight there after a few moments. She smiled tenderly at it, the first real _full_ smile she had worn in years as it bent its head and nuzzled her thumb.

It was an origami, so its movement was limited, it could not properly curl up in her hands or make a nest due to its lack of feet. But it was alive, _alive,_ she could hear it chirp softly at her. She imagined it was calling her mother. She was so caught up in her happiness that she hardly noticed how exhausted she felt; she had used a very particular kind of magic very young and since she had no wand and was sequestered away in her cupboard, none of the trackers and eyes that had been sent to watch her knew of the magic she had committed.

No surveillance was perfect; it had been assumed that since she was in an ignorant muggle neighbourhood she would have no access to such tomes, indeed the Old Man who placed her there had intended to control her education so she would never come across such ancient, occult abilities because he believed they were _dangerous._ It didn't matter that all magic was dangerous, that _life_ was dangerous, no he believed that if he could control 'dangerous' knowledge then nothing bad would happen and no one would ever stray from the "Light" has he thought of it. It was such an old fashioned notion; if he knew that someone's character was what drove them to do what jumped into their minds, he did not acknowledge it, the simplistic way he viewed people and magic would not allow for such complications even after Riddle.

Christina lay down on her pathetic bed, eyes locked on to her baby bird until they finally closed with sleep, she felt bad that she hadn't given it feet or a wider tail, she apologized, saying that she would improve on her creations. The bird merely chirped and nestled into her hair as best it could once she had fallen into the depths of sleep.

Up in the attic, a trunk rattled and rumbled. There were books inside that were lighting up in response to what they had been 'programmed', so to speak, to sense, by their previous owner. They were a fail-safe, of sorts, a collection of books saved from the pyre. They were meant for the prodigy in the cupboard, had the aunt not sealed them away.

A feeble gesture, only staving off the inevitable. In fact, perhaps if they had been provided, the incident would not have happened...

 ****~Time Skip~****

Christina panted, looking down at the pocket knife, stained with her blood. Carefully she held it over the large tiger she had painstakingly folded, allowing it to drip down into the 'heart'. She pressed her injured hand against her chest in familiar process now, waiting for the magic to heal it. She didn't care about the pain; there was so much pain in her life that she barely noticed the pricks and the white hot lines that she drew in circles on her palm. Yes, even her hand was becoming a delicate work of art; there were little, star-like pin pricks and white lines inflicted all across it, forming an almost ocean like design – clear water, stones rolling in the waves. At some point she'd transfer to her other hand, but she didn't want to stress out her dominant fingers.

She pulsed her magic, again. The tiger shivered, looked like it was going to topple over – and then growled, and leaned to stretch out its limbs. Christina grinned, and the bird in her hair (she called it Neph) trilled at the new companion.

Since her first success had largely been an accident, it had been painful trial and error as she tried to figure out the concepts without any guides. She believed that the inexplicable, the _magic,_ was in both her blood and her spirit; and with magic her blood was _life_. So when she animated Neph, it was because Neph had her life force inside her. (she imagined Neph as a girl, though obviously the origami had no way of speaking.) However there were words, words and intentions that had taken several attempts to fully grasp and implement during the process, so she had several motionless and bloody artifacts that had not 'caught', not that she particularly cared.

Her aunt and uncle hadn't noticed the reckless scars on her hands. Why would they?

Of course, the more friends she created the harder it was to hide them...this tiger in particular, Christina realized with a jolt of worry, was too big to be content in this tiny enclosure, she would have to move him somewhere else, somewhere safe from both the animals of the outside world and the animals that lived in this house...it would amuse Dudley to destroy Neph, and her aunt and uncle would be horrified at this great display of her _abnormal_ power.

"I know it's small," she said to the tiger when he finished pacing around her to look inquisitive. "Don't worry, I'll move you to the attic when I get the chance. I'm the only one who goes up there."

The tiger growled.

"I'm sorry," Christina said patiently, "but you're made of paper, and Dudley likes ripping things. I don't want to endanger you."

The tiger whined in protest.

"I didn't have anything stronger," Christina apologized, knowing that a proud tiger would rather be made of iron or stone. "It's so hard to get anything here. Someday I'll move you to something better, okay, Fred?"

Her tiger growled and grumbled, but acquiesced. After all, mother knows best...Christina delicately brushed her hand against him before herding him into the corner and covering it with her pillow, hiding him from Vernon's prying eyes. She quickly donned her coat and nodded for Neph to enter her usual pocket. Moments later, her aunt was banging on the door again, demanding breakfast as usual. That hadn't changed in a year.

Christina agreed sunnily and skipped into the kitchen; her aunt eyed her warily not entirely used to or pleased to see her niece so unbothered and cheerful. Something in the girl had changed; she tried to hide it but she seemed _possessed_ by some sort of maniac excitement. It made Petunia truly uneasy; it reminded her of when her _precious sister_ would come back from school, eagerly prattling on about having turned toads into teacups or some other occult horror she'd learned to do there.

Petunia focused on the anger, on the bitterness, because then she wouldn't remember the fact that her sister had _terrified_ her. Lily had been a cheerful girl, friendly and kind in spite of her fearsome temper, but that hadn't meant much before she _went_ to that school. Then she'd _learned_ something...

Petunia had a vivid memory of going to Lily's room during a summer evening to bring her down for dinner, to find her sister cutting her arm with a knife and letting it drip onto a mat with nonsense images scrawled all over it...okay, they looked a little like letters, but not from any language Petunia was aware of...White smoke had risen from the mat, and started to take the form of some _thing_ with shredded, bony. That was as much as she had seen before Petunia slammed the door shut and bolted down the stairs, screaming in terror.

Sweet, precious Lily had of course protested that the _thing_ she had spoken to was not dangerous to _them_ , and her besotted parents had bought that without batting an eyelash, had accused _her_ of slandering her sister.

She had never learned exactly what her sister had been doing, probably summoning some demon...yes, perhaps that explained how freakishly _smart_ and _unchildlike_ her niece was. The Potter freak hadn't sired her, it had been some _monster_ her sister had summoned from god knew where. She would have told Vernon but she was afraid that saying it would bring the creature to their door, Speak of the Devil and such...of course that old bat, Dumble something, had sworn that the 'familial protection' would safeguard them from any harm (like her parents, dead because of the Freak war), but how safe could she be if she had a half demon _freak_ in the house itself?

Christina began humming along with the radio as she worked; some Elvis tune was on rerun and the girl liked him. It was probably the only thing about her that was natural.

 _Let_ that _be what she's so infernally happy about_ , Petunia thought. _Don't let it be because she's somehow_ learning _the things I've been keeping from her._

"Ma'am? Is something wrong?" The girl's voice broke her revere. She had turned away from the meal and was looking at her with a slightly furrowed brow. Those green eyes, Lily's eyes, stabbed into her chest like accusing knives.

"What? What do you mean?" Petunia barked. "Keep those eyes on the pancakes!"

Christina obediently averted her gaze, instead pouring batter into the pan as she said, "Well, you're just looking...well, like you're thinking really hard on some memories. You don't often look at me like that. I was just wondering."

"You wonder too bloody much – don't you get tired of overthinking everything?" Petunia snapped, clenching a fist, hoping in vain that the _creepy brat_ took that at face value.

She didn't _want_ Christina to look at her with those contemplative, _knowing_ eyes, hated her encroaching stare that felt like being x-rayed. She felt like the girl was toying with her, that she already knew what Petunia was holding back and thought her small minded, childish, _pathetic_. That was an infuriating vibe to get from any child, much less a _freak's_ , much less _Lily's._ It felt like Lily's pity, the sad way her sister would look at her when she professed her hatred of her unnatural, demonic abilities. It was like her damned sister was still haunting her years after she died.

It didn't help that Christina looked so bloody like her, it was like she was a _clone_ instead of a child; she couldn't see any trace of James Potter in her except for the shape of her jaw and the messy nature of her bright red hair.

Dudley came thundering down the stairs a minute later, Vernon behind him since he had gone out to get the paper for once. "We're gonna go to the _park_ today!" Dudley yelled, throwing himself into his chair causing it to creak loudly. Christina was honestly impressed that it could support his weight, Dudley had more in common with a baby whale than a boy sometimes (though a whale would be gentler, more innocent, than he had ever been). "No math!"

Christina's lip twitched. She didn't understand why Dudley hated math so much; it was by far the easiest course to understand and master. There was always only one correct answer once you knew what to do. Luckily her back was to them, handling the pancakes, so none of them noticed her heretical expression.

"I'm glad you'll be having fun, Dudders," Petunia simpered. Neph shuddered in Christina's pocket, out of disgust maybe...or perhaps she, from Petunia's tone, was expected her to regurgitate food for everyone to eat. The thought caused her to snort.

"Something funny, girl?" Vernon asked sharply.

"No uncle, of course not, I was just finishing up that's all." Christina responded promptly, her voice carefully deferential. It was easier now, that she had this personal epiphany about her power. She had it, they couldn't take it from her – you couldn't remove knowledge once it existed. You couldn't beat an idea to death, couldn't lock it up, couldn't silence it, couldn't cut it out. It was hers, now and forever. She turned and placed the pancakes on their respective plates, content to ignore the massive frown Dudley was shooting her way.

"The park should be nice," she said softly. "It'll do us all good to get some fresh air,"

Vernon grunted and turned the page on the newspaper. "You parroting that from your teacher again? They've got you well trained."

Christina didn't bat an eye. She knew what she knew, though inside the accusation rankled. How dare he imply she hadn't earned what she had learned, stored and created? Did he think her incapable of possessing her own opinions?

Whatever. The thoughts of someone stupider than her meant nothing. And she was pretty sure the Dursley family had five brain cells between the three of them.

 ****~Line Break~****

So she went to school on time for once; the expedition meant that if she'd gone later, Vernon or Petunia would have had to drive them out herself. Christina arrived in a grey overcoat that had a hood she kept up all the time, to help the image that she was 'sick' and 'fragile'. It was an older area, often closed off from the general public; she wondered how the teachers had gotten permission to bring them here. Supposedly they were on a nature hunt, though Christina knew that at least half the class wouldn't bother with it, instead spending their time roughhousing.

Splitting off from the other children – the teachers had to put her in a group, no one would pick her, and the girls while nice were plainly unnerved by her so she kept her distance as usual. Christina left them to look for butterflies, wandering through the tall trees and thick grass, enjoying the breeze on her face. The sky was clear and the sun was shining, for once it warmed her skin instead of hurting her. Christina felt the gentle hum of magic in the world all around her, in every living thing – pulsing through it like lifeblood.

She ran her hands through her hair, contently whistling as she walked enjoying the light of day. Even the fact that Dudley had preemptively stolen her minuscule lunch didn't bother her. The world seemed...different. She wanted to take it in.

As she wandered, Christina came to a large clearing. It was oddly shaped, signalling that it had once been a human encampment of sorts, but had been lost to time. In the middle of the camp was a large stone that looked almost like a head.

Curious, she walked up to it and ran her hands over its surface, brushing away the leaves and vines. Her fingers brushed along long, slender veins cut into the stone in elegant lines; sparks left her nails as they found the grooves.

 _This is important,_ the magic seemed to say. _All you need is a key._

But what was it?

Christina eyed the stone, walking in a circle around it. The carved lines lead across the stone and into the dirt. Perhaps more of it was buried beneath? Glancing over her shoulder to see if she had been followed, she knelt on the ground and began to dig, trawling up dirt and stubborn roots as she went. It took a lot of time, since she didn't have a shovel or any such thing, but she was so intent on her project that she took no notice of it. She did not perceive her group returning to the general area; and by consequence, her teachers sending someone to come look for her...

It took so long. She dug a trench around the stone until her fingers ached and bled, and eventually they struck stone further down, within the earth itself. Massive, carved stone, made by human hands and nothing natural...she got up off her knees and took several steps back. The stone was shaped like a _head_ , she realized – a human head with wide and sharp, animalistic angles, particularly near the mouth. The lines weren't just waves, they were shapes, almost like letters though they were no language that she had seen before – and she knew a handful of Russian and Japanese words and phrases, from the many books she had read.

It was a statue? No, that didn't seem quite right. Why would a statue be buried in a park near Little Whining?

Christina knelt again, right at the edge of the trench she had dug, reaching down and brushing her hand against the neck/upper chest area that she had managed to uncover. One set of lines, just under the eyes and the mouth, was a simple circle with a key shape in the middle. Her bloody fingernails brushed along it...and her magic sparked, more suddenly and violently than it ever had before.

The lines and images on the stone began to _glow._ Softly, at first – a quick pulse of red and white light, so quick she thought she had imagined it. Then, a few seconds later, it pulsed again – much brighter. Gasping, she stumbled backwards as the ground rumbled, like a train running below her feet...the stone pulsed again, the lines bright as a floodlight and red as her blood.

The ground exploded as a giant mass moved upwards – Christina jumped and crawled away as a massive stone hand erupted from the earth, slamming its palm on the ground a few metres away from her. The statue's 'eyes', glowing red, seemed almost to narrow the other arm pulled itself loose, taking a massive tree root with it – it was wrapped around the shoulder joint. The giant heaved and stepped out of the earth to Christina's right, towering over her and blocking out the sun. Christina hadn't ever seen anything so big; it was twenty five feet tall. It was bulky and built like a tank, massive feet and hands big enough to hold Christina at the waist and cover half of her body. The red circle and key were just above the chest plate, where the neck met the shoulders...there were more of those strange letters, bigger, five written in a pentagon shape on the middle of the chest area, six in a circle on its back. Aside from the letters, there were lines – these ones long lines, looping and thin – that ran all over the body, along the legs and arms, up the neck, across the chest and back, and around the head as she had already seen. The lines hummed with energy. _Magic._ The red glow had softened to a faint but steady pulse as the giant regained its full height.

Christina stared, her limbs locked with frozen awe. The giant moved again, stone grinding as it turned its head towards her. The eyes, unlike the rest of the body, glowed not red but white. It reminded her of the glow of the robot eyes from a movie the school had shown them a while back; robots programmed and created to serve man, but threatening to destroy them instead. Perhaps she should run...

However, whatever terrible fate the giant might have inflicted on her – her young mind was hazy on the details, she just knew it was _bad –_ did not come to pass. Instead it knelt on one large knee, rattling the ground as it did so, and slid one hand underneath her. Lifting her off the ground, it raised her to its shoulder, where it stopped moving. She understood. She left his hand and settled next to its head, balancing herself there as the giant slowly stood, and became still.

Christina traced the nearest embedded line, feeling the magic drumming under her fingers like blood in a vein, and couldn't help the laughter that escaped her lips. Neph buzzed in her pocket; she let her out on an impulse; the origami bird fluttered onto the top of the giant's head and alit there.

Christina had a strong sense that she was breaking some unspoken rule.

Not that she cared. She had never felt magic so keenly ever before – and before, it had always been her own magic, reminding her of how alone she was, aside from Neph and her other Creations. But the magic she sensed within the giant was different, foreign, it did not come just from herself. Oh, there was part of her in there now. But the original, the creator of this giant...their magic was embedded in the stone just as the physical carvings. It was old, worn, and perhaps whoever had granted it had died a long time ago...but the feeling of kinship, knowing there was someone else with these same abilities that were shunned in Christina by her neighbours and family...This giant...the _Golem,_ she realized suddenly, that was the name of a stone creature animated by magic...it was a creation of magic. And she had reawakened it, brought it back to life.

She wanted to make one of her own.

"HEY! FREAK!"

She was so startled – alarmed, really – to hear his voice that she nearly toppled from her perch. Dudley and a group of his friends had stomped into the clearing. She had forgotten that she wasn't alone...

"What is THAT?" Piers yelped, freezing and staring at the faintly-glowing Golem. The stone monolith was sitting very still, and briefly Christina wondered whether or not her non magical school mates could tell that it was awake and perceiving them. To what extent _could_ it 'see' Dudley and his friends?

"I found it," She said with a faint shrug, kicking her heels against its armoured shoulder. "Isn't it cool?"

"Whoa," One of the other boys said. "Look at the size of it!"

Dudley snorted. "You always find the weird stuff, freak." He muttered. She scowled. He never respected anything unless it had a screen. Hopeless. "There something on my face?" He snapped, glaring. He bitterly resented how she made him feel inferior and stupid.

"No," she said with a shrug. Well, she thought that his expression made him look like an inverted pub face, and while she didn't say it the thought was written in her tone. His gang members gawked at her and Dudley clenched his fists.

"Come down, freak," He growled, "The teacher's calling."

She clung to the head. "How do I know that?" She challenged. "Or do you just want to beat me up like usual? It's not like you're good for much else."

Dudley turned purple. "Say that again?!"

"You're a foul, stupid liar," Christina articulated very slowly, like she was speaking to a baby. Dudley turned a shade of purple that highlighted his resemblance to Vernon. "And I don't trust you. I'm staying up here."

Dudley snarled and rushed forward, intending to climb the golem and drag her down to hit her. Christina sat back. _Dudley is too fat to climb,_ she thought, _he'll grumble, never reach me, and storm off._ Sure enough, with the position the golem was sitting in, the chest was too vertical for Dudley to get any footholds in. He and his friends all struggled; Malcolm managed to climb up a bit but ultimately lost his footing and slid back to the grass. She smiled brightly, feeling safe for once.

"I'm gonna kill you, freak!" Dudley yelled, red faced and furious.

Before Christina could retort, the red lines on the golem flared again. Piers, Dennis and the other two boys screamed as the golem suddenly moved, raising one hand and swinging it directly at Dudley, who had a few seconds of wide-eyed panic before it happened...

There was an awful, loud _crack_ upon the impact, the crunch of bones _;_ then Dudley went flying across the clearing. The other four boys scattered, screaming and running in every direction. Dudley slammed into a tree with a wet _crunch_ and fell to the ground in a boneless heap.

Christina froze so still she herself may have become a statue. She stared in disbelief at her cousin's body, as the golem returned to its sitting position and the runes died down again. Dudley lay still, limbs on awkward angles, and he wasn't moving – wasn't _moving_ -

She scrambled down the golem and onto the ground – _woofing_ as her feet hit the stone, though she barely noticed – and hurried over to her cousin's body. Up close, his limbs were at obscene angles, and blood was pooling in the grass he lay face down in.

Christina made a huge mistake. She turned him on to his side, hoping to rouse him, or see how badly he was hurt...and saw his smashed-in face. The impact of the golem's hand had fractured his skull, shattered his nose and cheekbones, and dislodged most of his teeth.

Nausea swept over her in a dizzying wave; the world tilted and then went black.

 ****~Line Break~****

She woke in the middle of the night, in a hospital bed in a room next to Dudley.

She didn't come here often – only for annual checkups that would be strange to miss. The white walls unnerved her with how plain and barren they were, like they'd suck her soul away if she died. She could hear sobbing. It sounded like her aunt...and her uncle. Fear gripped her stomach. She tilted her head towards the room next to her, trying to listen.

"...mostly shock. She's also quite famished, not eating nearly enough, that probably contributed. Has she not been eating proper meals?"

"She has." Vernon said, his voice lacking its usual brusqueness. Instead it sounded like he was trying to keep it steady. "She just doesn't...doesn't seem to retain it." That was a weak excuse, but he didn't let anyone dwell on it. "What about Dudley?"

"It's...not good, Mr Dursley."

"Tell me!" Petunia shrieked. "Tell me, tell me, what happened to my baby..."

"He got hit by something...I'd say it was a semi truck judging by these injuries..." The doctor took a break. "His skull is fractured in three places; his nose is basically gone as are all but two of his teeth. He'll need extensive surgery to reconstruct his face..." He paused. "Five of his ribs are broken, one of his lungs collapsed, and his stomach hemorrhaged last night before being stabilized. I'm sorry, but his position is extremely precarious. Frankly I'm amazed he's still alive."

Petunia howled, like some sort of wounded animal, and collapsed on her husband.

Christina felt sick. All she'd wanted was for Dudley to be unable to hurt her. She hadn't wanted him to _die_...

She thought back to when he tried to steal her painting. Or...or...or maybe she had wished it once. But she hadn't _meant_ it! She hadn't thought about what that really _meant_...this was bad...this was really, really bad!

"You can't mean that! He's my _son_! He's my _son,_ my only _son,_ you can't tell me he'll die..." Petunia ceased to make sense and started making blubbering noise.

"He'll only die if you don't do your ruddy jobs!" Vernon bellowed, but it didn't have the impact he wanted it to because his voice cracked right in the middle of it.

Christina pulled her hands towards her chest. Neph twitched; she could almost feel concern from the little paper bird.

She had to fix this. She had no idea how she'd do it, but if she had magic, there had to be _something_ she could do...it didn't matter if Dudley would never do the same in her position, all that mattered was that this was her fault...she'd fix this. There had to be something.

Back in the attic of the house, the trunk rumbled loudly, then smashed through the door and landed in the living room.

 ****~Line Break~****

Christina stalled and stared at the trunk.

She was surprised when Vernon and Petunia took her home, only to practically push her through the doors and shut her in, telling her to watch the house while they stayed with Dudley. Granted this wasn't the first time they'd done something like this – Petunia was a hysterical woman who flew into a panic if her precious Dudders so much as skinned his knee, after all – but given the state Dudley was in, he wasn't leaving the hospital any time soon. It was unlike Vernon to be willing to leave her alone in the house, where she might 'steal' stuff or burn it down or whatever.

However, the trunk hadn't been there when she left the house this morning. They were old, and still had some dust on them despite their rapid exodus from the attic. There were three carved letters on the silver clasp keeping it closed. LCE.

Neph burst out of Christina's pocket and flew over to the trunk, alighting on it and tapping her beak against it. Christina eyed it warily, before walking to the back door and looking into the basement to see if anyone had broken in. She saw no sign of any intrusion. Cautiously she returned to the room and examined the trunk again. Neph tapped insistently.

Christina ran her fingers over the clasp...which automatically snapped open, causing her to shriek with surprise. When nothing lunged out of the trunk to eat her, she slowly opened it...which revealed, not a bunch of dusty books and blankets as she expected, but a _stairwell_ that lead down into a darker area. That didn't make any...sense...

Her breath quickening, Christina went to the kitchen and got a flashlight. She turned it on and pointed it into the trunk...illuminating a simple wooden floor at the foot of the ladder. There was also part of a bookshelf that she could see from here. Curiosity overwhelmed all the feelings that had been rattling around her head since yesterday, Christina looped the flashlight's handle around her wrist and climbed into the trunk, down the ladder to the bottom. Once her feet hit the floor, she found that she was at the front of a hallway lined by two bookshelves on either side. The walls were wooden and lined with torches, which spontaneously lit with a blue flame when she straightened up. The hallway lead to a doorway with a room on the other side.

Neph flew down and sat on Christina's shoulder. Blinking, the girl slowly walked down the hall, panning her flashlight over the shelves. There were lots of books there, but many of them weren't in English...in fact...her heart quickened. Some of them had the same sorts of images/letters on them that were inscribed on the golem that had hurt Dudley...that she had activated...

She hurried through the doorway to find herself in a living room, large and spacious – in fact, it was possibly bigger than the Dursley living room upstairs! - modestly but lovingly furnished. There was a blue carpet covering most of the floor, a comfy couch pushed against one wall with an older model TV sitting across from it. The walls were pained a dark gold with some silver sparkles like stars patterned across it. A ceiling fan hummed to life on a low setting upon her entrance. There were more shelves with more books, but there were also buckets, papers, paints, and brushes neatly lined up on another table across from the first one. Hanging on the southern wall was a broomstick with a sterling silver plaque under it. Walking over to it, Christina read the words _Nimbus 1947._ It wasn't the only thing on the wall – there was also a Japanese Oni mask and a broadsword that probably weighed more than Christina herself did, both hanging from hooks on the eastern wall.

Christina looked around and saw that the living room had two adjacent rooms – a kitchen and a bedroom. Feeling hungry – she hadn't eaten since leaving the hospital – she walked into it, the torchlight brightening as she stepped onto the white tiled floor. There was a table that would sit four comfortably, a sink, several cabinets and a fridge. The fridge had those odd letters scrawled over it too...Christina opened it and was surprised to see perfectly preserved food inside it (everything smelled like it was freshly picked/processed!), including a carton of milk, a bowel of grapes, a few apples, bagels, tomato sauce, and some other sorts that she didn't recognize and might have come from overseas. Grabbing a handful of grapes and one bagel, Christina placed them on the table and opened the freezer, almost hoping for ice cream. However, it was (and it was almost as large as the fridge) packed to the brim solely with different kinds of meat, some of which Christina, again, didn't recognize. Feeling slightly put off by this, she closed it and began rooting through the cupboards. She found plates and glasses along with packages of crackers and trial mix. No weird letters _there_ , at least, though she had an odd feeling that particular area of the house didn't need them.

Grabbing one box of graham crackers and some jam, Christina turned to the table and made herself a meal, eating as much as she wanted for the first time she could remember. Once she was done, she walked over to the sink...and nearly dropped the plate when she saw it _also_ had weird letters carved into its surface despite its' muggle composition.

This was starting to scare her. Could anything in this strange house come alive?

Very tentatively, Christina placed the plate in the sink. When nothing happened, she let out a sigh and brushed her finger across the letter just below the water faucet. To her pleasant surprise, water jetted out of it, and soap from the dispenser automatically fell in. The plates would...wash themselves?

Why hadn't she known about that before now?

Curious and deeply hungry for an explanation, Christina left the kitchen and went to the last room she hadn't investigated yet – which turned out to be the bedroom.

Christina instantly felt warm when she stepped inside. The very air seemed infused with...something. It was a feeling, vaguely familiar, it brought back memories of a crib in a small cottage just before the Man in Black broke in...there was a single-person bed with a thick, fluffy white comforter covering it and a hand made quilt folded at the foot. There was a painting of a swan hanging from the wall, a writing desk sitting to the side across from the bed, and a nightstand next to it that had a lamp and a book that looked like a journal.

There was also a picture there...a moving picture? Yeah, the characters were moving...

Walking over, she picked the frame up and held it in her hands.

It depicted a man and a woman who looked just like her, dressed in winter wear and laughing over something. The woman was holding a baby in her arms; while the photo was black and white she had no doubt that she had red hair and green eyes...the same that she saw in the mirror every day...the man had a similar face to her...was she the baby...? these were...her parents...

Christina reached out and gently touched the images with her fingers. The inhabitants mimed as if to high five her, and suddenly the room blurred over and she fell to her knees clutching the frame against her chest, great, heaving sobs leaving her throat. The noises barely sounded human. It took a long time for her to stop crying.

Sniffling, her throat raw, Christina rubbed her face on her sleeve before gently replacing the frame on the night stand. Then her eyes fell on the journal. Written on the cover were a familiar set of initials, L.C.P. Written beneath it, however, was C.L.P.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Christina took another shaking breath and opened the cover of the book.

 _ **This journal is the property of Lily Ceclica Potter (nee Evans), bequeathed to one Christina Lily Potter.**_

She sniffed, smiled, her head spinning and her heart worn with an ache she could not describe. It was not a wholly bad ache, like what she felt at the hospital as the doctor described Dudley's injuries, or the ache of loneliness she felt when she slept in the cupboard before she created Neph and the others. It was a good ache, a complicated feeling, and she welcomed it with a tearful hug. She turned her attention to the first page.

 _ **If you are reading this, I can only imagine what you must think of me. To be frank, however, if you are thinking of tracking me down and giving me a lecture on 'dark based magic' and how it shouldn't be used, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the left-hand evacuation procedure.**_

Christina giggled. She could almost imagine her mother standing with her arms across her chest, staring at a point past the would be lecturer's head, pretending to listen while tuning them out entirely.

 _ **Frankly, I'd be most insulted by the implication that I haven't given my work and research any thought before pursuing any of it. I have. I've given it a lot, to be honest – you simply do not start poking the things I have without proper planning.**_

 _ **I am not an idiot, nor am I some arrogant traditionalist who either blindly accepts or rejects certain things because I'm supposed to. I am a stranger in this world, and I believe that some things are worth preserving while others should be left on the way side and forgotten. I question the hypocrisy of a world that condemns summoning while still carrying contracts that enslave a woman to a man for all her life. I reject the arrogance of a world that claims I know nothing of its history, then shames and threatens me when I try to uncover and unlock something from its ancient days. It's no bloody wonder there's so much unrest, when this world is determined to live solely in extremes. You cannot have light without dark, and dark without light, nor are they mutually exclusive.**_

 _ **I have uncovered a lot of things the common subconsciousness has attributed to legend and dreams. I know the Hallows are real, though I am not foolish enough to search for them. I know there is another realm in Avalon, though you must be careful when entering it. I know that if I brought half of this to the Ministry, short of the Department of Mysteries, I would be laughed out or have a bounty set on my head by short sighted fools. I hope against hope that my application to the Department is accepted, though with the rising racial tensions (I have no other word for it, though it seems not entirely appropriate. It is distant ancestry that separates us, not skin tone) I fear that I will be drafted into a militia before they have time to file a response.**_

 _ **I am a muggle born witch. Perhaps, someday, my children will be pure blood. When they look back at what I've done, I hope they respect and admire it and brag about their humble roots, instead of being self aggrandizing, but hopelessly sheltered chits like a certain James Potter!**_

As Christina read, she felt a smile creeping across her face. Her mother sounding like, well, _her_!

She was a witch! She had magic. There _were_ other magic users out there, a whole society of them! They had their own legends, ancient powers – Avalon was real! Her heart was hammering with excitement. This validated all the time she'd spent alone, wondering if she truly was a freak. Her mother was a witch and was just like her.

Though why was she calling her father a self aggrandizing, sheltered chit? That puzzled Christina immensely. Oh sure, she was familiar with the concept of belligerent sexual tension (as a concept, at least – again, she did a lot of reading. There wasn't much else to _do_ in the cupboard.) but it struck her as odd nonetheless. Perhaps this was before she really got to know her father? She turned back to the rest of the paragraph.

 _ **Since this world is so obsessed with legacy, I leave this trunk – my home away from home, away from home (heh) – to whatever children/nieces/nephews I might have, their grandchildren, great-grandchildren, et cetera. Perhaps you will have some fancy baron or viscount title, or perhaps you will be born of muggles or squibs or a combination of the above. Whatever it may be, though I may not get to meet you, I love you, and I hope these tomes I have written and recovered serve you well.**_

Christina rubbed at her eyes. She was crying again. Was it because she had nearly nine years of tears to shed? Was it because Petunia had attributed foolishness and apathy to the lack of her mother's presence in her life, having said it so many times that part of her started to believe it even with the nightmares of her mother's death?

She began to turn through the pages. She saw more of the odd letters written out, but this time she had her mother's words to guide her.

 _ **If you are going to Hogwarts – or any magical school, I suppose, but there's really only Hogwarts for major education (aside from homeschooling) in the general Magical Britian Area, so if you're still native that's probably where you're headed – you'll notice an elective course called Ancient Runes. I recommend you take it, if only for a year so you can easily understand and access half of what makes this trunk tick.**_

 _ **However, know this ahead of time – Ancient Runes isn't just a language, it is**_ **the** ** _language of the precursor of all magic – Avalon. And so much of it was lost when that kingdom vanished into the mist. Since it faded into myth, it's regarded largely as a mere curiosity – when I spoke to the Professor of the course in my second year, he didn't even know that! But there is a reason for this, and not the one you think. A lot of the old language was_ suppressed _._**

 _ **Because it wasn't deemed 'acceptable'.**_

 _ **For a world so obsessed with its cultural identity it is hostile to any new blood that enters it – to the extent that wars have been fought and may be fought in the future – I find it morbidly hilarious that they are censoring the most powerful and ancient part of their history. The originals.**_

Christina bit her lip. Censorship. What was it about the runes that scared people? _Her mind flashed back to Dudley's mangled body._

 ** _If you are uncertain, take this bit of wisdom –_ life _is dangerous, little love. Your wand can kill in a hundred different ways with spells that are taught in the very first year. What matters is the_ precaution, _the_ intention, _the_ fetters _you give yourself._ You _must know what is and isn't acceptable. If you cannot draw distinct lines that cannot be crossed, do not touch the Runes or Blood Magic. It will not end well for you, or anyone._**

 _But I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't have the knowledge..._

So that's what the runes on the golem and around the trunk were for. They were an old language – a language of invocation and sealing, clearly. That would explain why the golem could be activated by her blood, why it reacted in a certain way when Dudley threatened to kill her. It was effectively programmed to do so, with basic runes that allowed it only one sort of response to a given situation. So it didn't recognize that Dudley was in no position to carry out his threat...if only the programming had been more sophisticated, if the creator had thought the possibilities through more...

Perhaps her mother had some notes on that? With the shelves of tomes in the hallway, it seemed Lily was a collector of this sort of thing.

Christina skipped past several diary entries, which seemed to be following her mother's school years. This didn't seem to be one of her mother's 'work' or 'experiment' journals, instead chronicling her current thoughts, rants and various bits of information she thought were prudent to maintain.

" _ **It's all dark magic". Of all the ridiculous things...I get it, calling something**_ **dark** ** _when you're dealing with impressionable eleven year olds who are essentially being handed weapons of mass destruction is the sensible thing to do. Putting the fear of god in them so you don't have little kids in the infirmary who need limbs reattached. But I'm a bloody fifth year, and they're still treating me like the world is black and white and good and bad as if there is nothing in between, no compromises, no bridge between the concepts when life simply does not work that way even when we want it to! (make that_ especially _when we want it to.) Do the highest powers in this land really cling to such childish simplicity in their way of life?_**

 _ **How could the language of the literal beginning of magic be 'dark?' It was there before 'dark' magic even became a sub-genre of existence! I can't believe I'm having trouble convincing a school not to burn or ban books. This should be a house of**_ **learning!** ** _If they don't learn it here, what if they learn it on their own not knowing how to do so safely?!_**

 _ **I've saved a number of books from the restricted section before it was emptied; not nearly enough. I should start looking into other places, listening, learning, to find other tomes before they are lost to simple minded ignorance...**_

Christina smiled. Her mother was pretty cool, for how put upon she sounded. A lot of people would find taking on such a venture intimidating, but Lily went after it as a matter of course. She had a pretty cool mother...

She turned a few more pages and let out a small noise of surprise. A letter had fallen out from between the pages, onto the floor. She picked it up and turned it over. Her name was written across it. It was date marked a week before her birthday.

Taking a deep breath, Christina turned back to the journal and flipped ahead to the page the letter had been kept between. There were some dried teardrops on the page, and the writing seemed shakier than the rest.

 _ **I pray to God this is enough...**_

 _ **I was afraid it wouldn't work. I had never summoned a Higher Spirit before; especially not one as powerful as Anubis.**_ Christina gasped. **_James would be horrified if he knew (all the better that he doesn't. We never fully agreed on these things). But the prophecy...ugh, the f—king prophecy. I hate divination. I really do. Perceiving the nature of fate only leaves this profound sense of powerlessness...and fear._**

 _ **I do not know if I will live or die. We have been given the Fieldus Charm and I'm afraid it's not enough. One of James's most trusted friends is keeping the only key to our discovery, and I do not trust him to keep it. Why him instead of Dumbledore, or Remus? Peter...he has so much potential, but he's nervous, and he cowes easily...he's shown great bravery since the start of the war, incredible bravery...But if it fails, if he fails, if Voldemort somehow procures the secret anyway (I think I still have not seen the full extent of his magical ability), my baby...**_

 _ **I can't. I cannot allow my daughter's fate to be uncertain.**_

 _ **Anubis says that only death can pay for life. He helped me do the blood sealing. My life is now my daughter's. My love is her shield, her guard against whatever Voldemort might create. Should he kill me, then attempt to kill her, his magic will fail. Even the fabled killing curse will be thrown back in his face. As long as she is in need of it, Christina has my blood.**_

Christina whimpered. She raised her fingers and brushed them across the lightning shaped scar on her forehead. So that was the Man in Black. Voldemort.

 _ **Chrissy, I hope you're reading this. I hope that we are sitting side by side, laughing over my unneeded worries. If I'm not here, I hope you're sitting between Sirius and Remus, and they're taking care of you.**_

Christina cocked her head. Sirius? Remus? Who were they?

 _ **However, if the worst decision has been made (if our will has been lost, replaced or outright fabricated – we're at war, and this world has a long history of line theft or attempts at it) you might be reading this while avoiding my sister Petunia. If that's the case, there's a manila envelope on the upper shelf of my writing desk. When you get your Hogwarts acceptance letter and go to Diagon Alley and Gringotts, give it to your account manager and say you have evidence of line theft. I'll write this elsewhere to remind you, because it's important.**_

Line theft. Huh. Baron, Viscount...so the magical world was fashioned like an old kingdom? That sounded exciting!

 _ **There's another envelope under that, that will describe the basics of your position to you. You're in a somewhat precrious position, as it will explain. Aside from that...**_

There were some teardrops on the pages. She had a feeling that her mother was thinking very hard on how to pose her comments.

 _ **Chrissy, everything in this trunk is now yours. My books on Ancient Runes – both the Summoning and Blood Magic specializations. I want you to understand this before you read or attempt to do anything-**_

 _ **They are dangerous.**_

 _ **You cannot use any of them lightly. Do not invoke anything unless you have properly prepared. Never, ever assume you can cheat a spirit or short change a blood ritual. I cannot emphasize this enough, my little princess. Foolish use of these powers can inflict fates worse than death.**_

Christina's mouth felt dry. Worse...how could anything be worse than dying?

 _ **I believe you are a very smart girl. I've had precious little time with you, but I believe that. And I believe this knowledge will see you through all the trials that life has to offer you.**_

 _ **I love you, Chrissy.**_

That was the final entry.

Christina hugged the notebook against her chest, taking deep, shaky breaths. She didn't know how long she sat there, absorbing her mother's last words into her heart. There were still things she didn't understand – like who Sirius and Remus were. She would have thought that Petunia would have been happy to hand her off to other relatives. She glanced towards the writing desk, brow furrowed. Walking over and opening it, she found the envelopes sitting right where the note said they'd be. There were also a number of other journals there; these she believed were some of her mother's work and research diaries...how did she have time for all this?

There was a closed and locked drawer in the desk. She ruffled through the draws and came up with a silver key that hummed with magic. Wondering why her mother had locked something in her own magic trunk, Christina unlocked it.

The drawer held a small grey string bag. Upon opening it, a small, enchanted hourglass fell into Christina's hand. She twisted it between her fingers, brow furrowed, before recalling (never use something you don't understand) the warning and putting it away again.

It must be special, she thought, to be extra hidden. She locked it again, so as not to be tempted to mess with it.

Gently putting her mother's journal on the desk, she returned to the living room. She stared down at the carpet for several seconds...before kneeling down and pulling it back, pulling it to the side of the room. She sucked in a sharp breath.

A pentagram of Runes. This was where her mother had summoned Anubis. There were still bloodstains on the old letters.

Christina took a look around this eerie laboratory...and then she smiled.

 **End Prologue**

 _ **Welcome to my WIP on ancient runes and blood magic. I've been excited on the concept for a while, it's very underutilized in canon. So this is where we begin, the start of a grey fem!Harry. She won't be the only person who's using this variant of magic...I felt it was odd that so many of the wizards relied on their wands. Especially Riddle's men.**_

 _ **Read and Review please!**_


	2. Chapter 2

**Everything Has a Price**

 _ **Me: Wow! I...was not expecting this to be such a big hit. Thank you kindly to everyone who reviewed, left a favorite and a follow, and here's the next chapter! I'm less bogged down by University work at the moment, so while it's somewhat shorter than last chapter I think I got everything I needed to say, said. For now.**_

 _ **Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter**_

 **Chapter 1: Knowing**

 _A Day Earlier_

"This is more activity than the oblivators in this area have seen in years," Kingsley Shackabolt said ruefully, regarding the massive Golem in the middle of the clearing. Standing next to him were both Miss Figg – who had been called about an hour ago when the Runes on the monolith were translated – and an Unspeakable, who went solely by Clank. The fact that most aurors and citizens could go their entire careers/lives without so much as meeting an Unspeakable in person was alarming on its own; the fact that it happened in tandem with the appearance of this thing raised the question of what exactly had happened in the past twenty four hours.

"Well, I can't say anyone expected this!" Figg pointed out. She was pale faced. "An ancient Golem? Here in Little Whining? And not just any ancient Golem, but one with the name Potter written in hieroglyphs on it?!"

 _That_ revelation had thrown everyone around for a loop. The entire rationale for Christina Potter living in this area had been based on its removal from any magical community. The fact that this thing had been there all along...well, that sort of defeated the purpose, didn't it? Of course, Kingsley reasoned, Dumbledore was hardly omniscient. _No one,_ including the muggles themselves, had known or even suspected that an ancient weapon had been buried in one of their parks. The teachers they had interrogated (and were _still_ in the process of obliviating; they had been tipped off nearly half a day after the incident had occurred and were still struggling to play catch up. At least they'd managed to beat the camera crews to the site, or else this would have turned into a disaster of epic proportions) had claimed that they'd never seen it before, and there was a massive crater and displaced dirt where it had emerged from the ground.

Kingsley had been the one handed the fun task of interrogating Dudley Dursley's shell shocked friends on what had happened. It had taken a lot of coaxing and a calming draught, before they told him that "the freak" had wandered off on her own, and when they'd been sent to find her they'd found the golem with her sitting on its shoulder. Dudley had yelled at her, and the golem had reacted to the apparent threat to its master by punching him. Filing back for later the fact that the boys nearly exclusively referred to Christina Potter as 'the freak', Kingsley had then modified their memories so instead, the boy had run across the street to get to his cousin and had been hit by a truck. That was the 'muggle' explanation that matched closest with the boy's injuries. As for the golem itself, the oblivators ran with the story that it was an 'ancient statue' that had gone missing while being transported to a museum. Since only the boys had seen Potter interacting with the golem, those tasks could be preformed separately – the teachers hadn't believed the boy's story about the golem since it had 'powered down', so to speak, by the time they had approached it to find Potter and Dursley.

Of course, no one had seen a combat/guardian golem outside the Department of Mysteries for...oh, about six hundred years. Hence why the Unspeakables were here, despite much grumbling from the regular auror line over the apparent 'intrusion' on their investigation.

"The Dursley boy is lucky," Clank remarked tonelessly. "I'm surprised he wasn't reduced to a red smear against the tree trunk. Golems were meant for fighting trolls, ogres, chimera and other golems – he should count his blessings there's anything left of him." The man's only visible reaction to anything had been when he had seen the golem itself. He had been astonished, then he had grinned – or so Kingsley guessed by the tone of his voice, given that his face was mostly covered by a hood and a half mask – then he had called for backup and transportation.

"Do you really think what happened to that boy was _lucky_?" Kingsley asked incredulously, recalling the hysterical muggle school teacher's description of Dursley's injuries.

Clank calmly gestured to particular runes across the golem's back. "That thing was meant to kill things much more durable than him," he said, his tone still mild, "and he has not died yet. He may even live. That's enough to be grateful for."

Kingsley was about to remind the man of the state Dursley's body was probably in before refraining. The Unspeakables worked almost exclusively underground, experimenting with and monitoring magic that most citizens either did not have legal access to, or didn't even know existed. It was highly exclusive and selective in who it allowed to join – though it was one of the few branches in the Ministry that made absolutely no guarantees based on blood status. Once accepted, the Unspeakables virtually disappeared into their arm of the Ministry, which was off limits to visitors and most of the other staff. They were rarely seen coming and going from the building; for all Kingsley knew it had been years since Clank had _seen_ a child in person.

And he was the only person here who had an inkling of how the golem worked and, as a consequence, what might have happened. No one in the wizard public had seen a golem for over six hundred years; with the rise of the Statue of Secrecy making all out war between wizards on the scale they were used in somewhat impractical, heavy restrictions placed on the use of Blood Magic and the loss of Runic Lore, most wizards could go their whole lives without seeing one. And this one was not only present, but was still fully functional.

Clank was not particularly forthcoming on the details; typical attitude from anyone who works in the Department of Mysteries. What he did tell them was that the golem had been constructed by a member of the Potter bloodline, likely many generations ago, and it was 'keyed' to activate and recognize only a member with Potter blood as its Master. Bloodstains on the rock showed that no wanded incantation was needed – just the possession of the blood and the magic. Once activated, the golem's sole directive was to protect the Master and destroy her enemies. Which, as it seemed, included Dudley Dursley.

"So the girl awakened the golem," Clank mused. "I warned Dumbledore you can't truly separate a witch from magic."

"There's no way she did it on purpose," Figg butted in. "That's her cousin that's been put in the hospital by that old relic."

"Which will be a great comfort to her and the boy's parents if he dies, I'm sure," Croaker said unemotionally. Figg winced and quieted down. The cloaked man put his hands in his pockets as he continued to examine the golem. "It wasn't wise to leave her completely uneducated about her magic and her world." He said calmly. "If she'd known anything from our history – anything at all – she would have proceeded with less innocent curiosity and more caution."

"It keeps her safe from those individuals who might wish to exploit her," Kingsley said, automatically repeating one of the reasons Dumbledore had given for moving Christina to the muggle world and concealing said location. The Headmaster had faced enormous criticism when it was revealed that he had moved and arranged the Girl Who Lived's custody, completely bypassing any and all legalities along the way. If it hadn't been Potter's maternal aunt – someone who'd reasonably have immediate custody after the deaths of the girl's parents – he might have been charged with a felony.

"It also ensured she knew absolutely nothing about what she could do, from what I can see." Clank noted bluntly. "Are we arranging for the boy's injuries to suddenly be found to be not as severe as first thought? Recall, the Dursleys are likely to raise a complaint if the inept handling of their niece's condition put their son in a coffin."

"And the Ministry will take them seriously?" Figg muttered. It was possible, -on paper- at least, for muggles 'in the know' about magic to file complaints about intrusiveness or invasive behavior by wizards in their lives. However, the number of those complaints that had become solved cases in the past decades could be reasonably counted on both hands. Public perception of using magic on muggles tended to be wrapped in a blanket of 'remove their memories in the name of the Statue of Secrecy', so those who had complaints usually ended up forgetting about them. Even when they were not about merely seeing an undisguised dragon, but about a bored sixth year magically brainwashing the local teen gangs to amuse himself.

More wizards poured into the clearing, all wearing the distinct gray robes of the Unspeakables. Clank paused long enough to say, "Well, I suppose it is at the DLME's discretion whether a young boy should die or be permanently crippled by a magical artifact. Muggle or no," before striding towards the golem which quickly found itself surrounded by his fellow workers.

Kingsley let out a long breath. Figg shivered, staring after him. "Unsettling man," she muttered. "All of them, unsettling. They have their own agenda, those Unspeakables. Mark my words."

"No one really knows for sure what the Unspeakables do anymore," Kingsley admitted. "Not Dumbledore, not even the Ministers themselves. They have a lot of autonomy...all that we know for sure is that they do research, collect dangerous artifacts and tomes, and manage the Hall of Prophecies."

"And he's interested in Potter. If he says otherwise, I'll eat my hat."

Kingsley sighed, shaking his head. "I don't think they'll do anything, though. The Unspeakables don't generally challenge the other branches of the Ministry; they're content with their secrecy. However, I think we need to finish up here and you finish the second half of the mission."

"Seeing what Potter herself has to say about this," Figg recalled what Dumbledore had asked of them. She wondered how he'd known something had happened involving Christina so quickly; usually he relied on Figg herself to keep him updated on the girl's well being.

They didn't have to wait overmuch to be dismissed. The golem disappeared along with the Unspeakables roughly ten minutes later, and the last of the muggles were given their alternative story. The DMLE was muttering throughout most of it; aside from being territorial regarding their job, everyone seemed to be sharing the uncomfortable feeling that Figg got from the mysterious sect. It didn't help that Clank was very cryptic when asked what he would do with the golem, saying only that they would 'take care of it'. He had been so _pleased_ to see that thing, Figg thought...she would have to tell Dumbledore about it. He would know what to do, he always seemed to.

With that settled, Kingsley offered Figg his arm and apparated back to Privet Drive. Figg thanked him before he disappeared, in order to head off any further in depth examination of the incident. Hopefully it would be enough to keep 'interested parties' away from the Dursley's front door. Figg remembered all the 'generous' offers to adopt the Girl Who Lived that had circulated the Ministry. She could only imagine what half of those old families wanted poor thing for, because no matter what they said it wasn't out of simple altruism.

 _ ****~Line Break –the night before~****_

Christina hadn't slept at all after reading her mother's last journal. Her mind was too active, the need to explore everything her mother had left her too strong. So instead she decided to explore the trunk/flat, because it truly was designed to function as a house – attached to the bedroom was a white tiled bathroom with a large tub that had runes carved along it, to summon water and to regulate the temperature. There was a floor length mirror along one side, a marble counter top and various hygene implements such as a silver handled hairbrush and toothpaste. Christina took the first bath she'd had in a week and washed her hair for the first time in three months, running the hairbrush through the thick red strands again and again until it was sleek and shiny. The only thing it was missing were proper clothes her size; the few things she'd found were all made for a grown woman. Christina left them where they were; they must have been her mothers.

Christina regarded her reflection in the mirror, wondering what it would have been like to have her mother brush her hair while she prattled on about what she had learned that day. She reached out and touched the surface of the mirror between her eyes; she finally knew what her mother and father looked like, and she took after her mother.

That must be why Aunt Petunia didn't like looking at her.

The thought of the woman didn't even faze Christina anymore. Instead, content with her appearance, she left the bathroom and returned to the bedroom long enough to pick up the letter that had been put between the pages of the journal. It was dated a day before Halloween.

There was coffee and hot chocolate in the cupboards; her mother had a rune carved electric stove and oven along with the fridge and freezer. Christina hastened to make herself some caffeine stimulant before slicing open the letter with a knife and emptying the contents onto the table. There was a series of parchment bound together by string, and a normal paper page wrapped around it. Seeing as that was meant to be red first, Christina unbent it and began reading.

 _ **My Dearest Christina;**_

 _ **Contained in here is my still-in-progress catalog of all the tomes present in this trunk. (There are over a thousand, as if the printing of this letter. Depending on what happens tomorrow, this may be updated.) Some of then are Eldritch, and you are not to touch them until you are at least seventeen. I have put all of them on the same shelf, which is behind the quilt on the far east wall, so nothing will 'creep up on you' so to speak. Don't even enter the room unless you have to; many of those books have -properties- that will...**_ **encourage** ** _you to read them. Until you have some experience, they are too dangerous for you to handle._**

 _ **With that out of the way, you**_ **are** ** _free to access the rest of the books I have gathered and protected at your leisure, as long as you employ proper caution along the way. I have applied translation spells to about three fourths of them, with the highest tiers being the ones I haven't had the time to alter, given how things have been escalating lately. The list has beginners tomes listed first and are divided along Summoning, Rune Language, Binding and Sealing, Blood Magic and Necromancy, and Astral Travel. Everything has its own section, is listed both by complexity (say, by year of study – year one, year two,) and alphabetically, to keep things as uncluttered and easy to locate as possible. When you find something on the list, touch the title, and it will glow, with a corresponding glow on the spine of the book in question on its shelf. See? Very civilized, isn't it?_**

 _ **(I can**_ **almost** ** _see the look on my husband's face. Just because I'm not as utterly obsessed with neatness as Tuney doesn't mean I don't have a particular place I put my keys every night – which James seems incapable of comprehending. Honestly, it's amazing that man can find his shoes in the morning.)_**

 _ **Also, if you've examined my desk, you'll have noticed a mini compartment that's locked by a key. That, is my personal time turner – it can turn back time a maximum of twenty four hours in a single go; one turn equals one hour. Never interact with your past self, or let anyone know that there are two of you running around on any given day – the space-time coil can become very petulant when it's pulled out of alignment.**_

Christina looked up from the letter and thudded against the back of her chair, stifling a squeal. Time travel. Time travel! Magic was _amazing!_ Was there _anything_ her mother hadn't had covered?

Neph chirped, the noise sounding almost like a laugh, while Fred rumbled and jumped up on the table. Their friends – a fox, a rabbit, a bear and a penguin – were wandering around the living room, glad to have been released from the dubious safety of the attic. Christina smiled at them as they gathered around her before returning her attention to the letter.

 _ **Of course, start anywhere you wish – however, if I may make a recommendation, start with the Beginners Runes (that was the nearest translation of the title to English). Runes are a language unto themselves, darling – and the sooner you start learning them, the sooner you'll become bilingual. Take your time, and I'll say this once more for emphasis – never attempt to do anything unless you're ready. And if you think you're ready, double check everything just to be sure.**_

 _ **Good luck, my love**_

 _ **-Lily**_

The redhead smiled softly, nodding slowly to herself. "Victor wasn't ready for what his successful experiment would mean," she murmured. "He liked the idea of it, what succeeding would mean for him, but he didn't think of what might happen afterwards." She folded the letter and set it aside. "I'll be careful, mother."

She carefully picked up the catalog package; the whole thing was tied together with a string while five separate sections were tied with different colored wire. She pulled out the package with the heading ' _Runes_ ' and let her eyes run down the listing. She didn't have to look for long; she tapped the title written in her mother's neat cursive, then got up and walked into the hallway where the shelves lined the walls. There was a soft blue glow on the far right; she walked over and plucked the large tome off the middle shelf – and nearly dropped it. It was -heavy-, bigger than her math textbook, and it seemed to hum in her hands; like a lightbulb on a low burn. It was magic she was feeling.

Smiling even brighter, Christina walked back to the living room – her fox origami Kit had hopped onto her shoe while she was retrieving the book – and sat down on the couch. As she walked, the language on the cover and spine of the book rearranged itself, away from some ancient, incomprehensible tongue to modern English.

The rest of the origami animals gathered around her as she opened the book to the first page and started to read.

**~ _Some people are more quick on the uptake than others.~**_

Christina had been reading for several hours, hot chocolate on hand, when she hit on something familiar. The Rune language had more characters than modern English, but some were used more than others. The primary use of Runes were not for conversation among mortals, but communication between mortals and spirits. There were Runes that were primary language and secondary language in the 'library', and while it was something of an over-generalization, primary language dealt with Invocation – that is, summoning and speaking with spirits and ghosts – secondary language dealt with sealing and animation. One of the Runes she was looking at on page were the same ones she had seen on the arms and legs of the golem.

The book defined them both – Animation and Movement. Animation kept magic flowing through the construct, while movement was self explanatory.

 _I can do that,_ Christina thought. _I've already done it, actually._ The carnival of origami animals all made varying noises of curiosity when she looked up. _It couldn't hurt to try and make something new with mother's things. Something_ small _, so it couldn't hurt anyone, but bigger than my animals, something that can help me through the day..._

She glanced across the floor, where Anubis's summoning circle was once again concealed by the carpet, and an epiphany struck her.

Ancient Egyptians had a very extensive 'travel guide' so to speak for the afterlife. They imagined that there would be work to do, even after death. To ensure that their life after death was restful, they carved _shabti_ , clay or wax servants that would handle tilling of the fields, managing the house, etc. They had some uses outside of that, but that was the one most muggle scholars remembered. And help around this house – translating what her mother hadn't had time for, managing things that might have gone over a young girl's head (such as money)...that would be very useful.

Christina was seized with an excitement she hadn't felt since accidentally creating Neph. Placing the open book on the couch, she got up and hurried across the room to the west side. A set of double doors opened as soon as she touched the handle, revealing another massive room – just as big as the living room if not bigger. Torchlight lit the four corners with a bright blue glow; illuminating what seemed to be a cross between a muggle workshop and a church's mausoleum. There was a marble alter, racks on the walls covered in tools – varying kinds of knives, power drills; all carving and cutting tools – and along two sides there were large cabinets that scraped the high ceiling. The upper halves of which were protected by see through glass; inside Christina could see ornate glasses, incense candles, and bottles of wine. She walked over to cabinet on the right and opened the lower drawers. It didn't take her long to find what she needed; there were several boxes of plain gray clay. She smiled, then crossed the room to fetch one of the knives, cut herself a large swath from the box she had opened and placed it on the marble table. It was spelled not to stick, she noticed with glee.

Now, hanging from a series of metal bars on the ceiling were a series of braziers, several of which still had coal inside them. Christina climbed onto the alter and pulled one down; there was a lid to it so she could cook her creation inside once she finished it.

Christina began to press her fingers into the square she had provided for herself, thinking on a picture of _shabti_ she had seen once. Usually they were missing something – a leg, an arm – due to superstition that if they were _too_ lifelike, they might try to become their master. Of course, magic would take care of any concerns of that just fine – it would be an automaton with a purpose, nothing more.

Perhaps she could go from there some other time; with more experience.

 _ ****~Line Break~the next day-****_

Taking a breath, Figg walked up to the door at #4 and knocked on it repeatedly. When a minute went by and no one answered, she frowned and rang the door bell. Again, another minute went by and no one answered. _That's funny. Perhaps they're all out visiting Dudley? I wouldn't have thought that the Dursleys would have taken Christina with them...especially if they blame her for what happened._

The unpleasant possibility struck Figg, and she hammered on the door more insistently this time before going to check the windows. The curtains were drawn. She was about to go and attempt to call the house from her home phone when a faint, frazzled voice called, "I'm coming!" followed by the thudding of feet.

Moments later the door swung open, revealing a very tired but cheerful looking Christina Potter. "You're back, how is-" she faltered when she caught sight of Figg, blinking those vibrant green eyes a couple of times before saying, "Miss Figg! I wasn't expecting...did Aunt Petunia call you to watch me? Is she staying at the hospital for much longer?"

There were dark circles under those eyes, Figg realized. How long had it been since she slept? Not only that, but there was an odd substance on her clothes...dirt? Sand? Christina ran her fingers through her hair; her nails were caked with it. _She must have been tending to the garden,_ the old woman mused. _It's odd that I see her doing that so often; perhaps it's a hobby? Petunia certainly likes to go over everything with a fine toothed comb, perhaps Christina is picking it up from her._

"Actually, I was hoping I could speak to you." Figg responded. Christina furrowed her brow, eyeing her intently. Subtly the girl's body language shifted, becoming more defensive. "You haven't been here by yourself ever since yesterday, have you?"

"A day and a half, really." Christina responded, her fingers tapping against the door handle. "Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would rather stay close to Dudley, and they've been consulting a lot of people about – about what they should do for him." She shrugged. "It's fine. I can cook and walk to school by myself, and I already take care of the house, mostly."

"And what about you? You must be very upset, they shouldn't leave you alone..."

Christina bit her lip and glanced over Figg's shoulder. "I can get by on my own." She said with an indifferent shrug. "So they don't have to worry about anything but him. You can tell them that. I'm being good, everything is exactly where they left it, including the silverware and aunt Petunia's china collection."

 _Why would they expect those things to have been moved around? Since when do children find them interesting?_ "I'd like to come in, and talk to you about what happened."

"You can't!" Christina blurted, stiffening. She looked around suspiciously, as if she were expecting to be ambushed, and said very quickly, "The house is in no fit state right now, Miss Figg. And – and – and I'm not supposed to let anyone in when I'm by myself. I can come over to your place though; I'll be over in twenty minutes – after, after I'm done cleaning some stuff up." She rubbed her hands on her shirt for emphasis, nodding several times as if Figg had accepted before all but slamming the door in the older woman's face.

Figg was baffled. She'd never seen Christina behave like that. _She must be on edge, the poor thing. Waiting to be accused, if she hasn't been already._ It wasn't right that Vernon and Petunia were just abandoning her, even in the face of what had happened to their son. Clearly she was trying to handle it herself, but that was too much to expect from a child, even one so Figg accepted this oddity without much thought and retreated to her own house, her cats getting underfoot as much as possible along the way, and put a kettle of tea on – the young girl preferred hot chocolate, but she was out of that at the moment.

As promised, Christina did return – her hands clean, in a fresh change of clothes, her hair no longer tied back, looking incredibly sheepish and nervous. "I'm sorry for the delay," she said politely, stepping inside. Mr Tibbles came up and rubbed against her leg; she bent to pet him before trotting after Figg into the kitchen.

"Not a problem, dear," Figg said kindly, offering her a mug. "I didn't have any coca, but I do have green tea."

"Thank you," Christina said softly, taking it in both hands and sipping, her eyes sliding closed as the liquid heated her tongue. Figg examined the girl as she drank, wondering how best to broach the subject without upsetting her further. She also realized, begrudgingly, that Clank might have had a point about her lack of access to magic potentially hurting her – if there was ever a traumatic way to discover that one had **-** power-, this was it.

"I'd like to talk about what happened to days ago," Figg started. Immediately Christina stiffened, her eyes flicking up from the mug with her head still bowed. "Let me start by assuring you that none of it was your fault."

"I could have warned him about the truck," Christina mumbled, not looking directly at Figg but somewhere over her shoulder.

"A truck is not a golem, though." Figg said. Christina jumped, raising her head to look at the older woman, her muscles tensing and her eyes darting towards the door. "It's alright, dear. You're not in trouble, I promise."

"You _knew_?" Christina shrieked, her voice verging on accusing, knuckles whitening on the mug. "You _knew_ all along? All this time I've been coming to your house and you always _knew_?"

Figg raised her hands, trying not to show how startled she was. Christina was a quiet, mouse like girl, she never raised her voice and sometimes you had to strain to hear her the few times she _did_ speak. Figg wasn't sure she had _ever_ heard Christina shout before this moment. "Yes, I did – I wasn't supposed to tell you until you were old enough, but we hardly anticipated something like this happening-"

"Are _you_ a witch? Were you sent here to watch me, by-" Christina paused, seemingly wrestling with something, then her eyes flared again. "-you _knew_?! Why did you never _tell_ me? What were you _thinking?_ " She made varying noises of incoherent anger before shooting out of her chair. "I can _hurt_ people and you never _told_ me? I can make _bad things happen_ and you _never_ told me?!"

"You misunderstand! I was afraid you might react like this. Magic isn't a _bad_ thing, Christina!" Figg protested. "It's nothing to be afraid of-"

"Yes, nothing to be afraid of, until I _wake something up by accident,_ because I didn't even know I could _do_ that, and then Dudley gets hurt because he said he'd hurt me, only he couldn't hurt me but the golem wasn't built with programming to ignore idle threats and now _he's gonna die!_ " The young girl stamped a foot repeatedly for emphasis.

Figg opened her mouth helplessly, but the girl was not done; she began to pace on the spot, fists clenching and unclenching. "Would you not tell a person holding a stick of dynamite not to hold it near a fire? Would you not tell a person covered in gasoline to stay away from sparks? How can a blind person be expected to know the color of the road? How could a deaf person be expected to hear an alarm going off? This is elementary. This is basic safety! I should have _known_ this already! If I had _known_ what I could do I could have stopped this from happening!"

"Not necessarily," Figg said desperately, trying to regain control of the conversation, "that thing you found there, it was built to be a machine of war and conflict. Even if you had given it direct orders, its internal – well, programming –" It was as good a word as any to describe the Rune work; "could have overridden it."

Christina scowled. "Could have – but it could have _obeyed_ me too! It was designed to obey a master, and if it protected me than it must have seen me as a master! And now Dudley is going to die...my nine year old berk of a cousin is going to _die_ because I _didn't know!"_ She paused for a second, catching her breath, before frowning even more fiercely. "And you're distracting me! You're a _witch_! Were you sent here to watch me and keep me from knowing anything?"

Then something seemed to occur to her, and her face went very white – with fear or anger or perhaps both, Figg couldn't be sure. _"Aunt Petunia_ never told me! _She knows_ what I amtoo, doesn't she?! That's why she _looks_ at me like that! Like I'm – like I'm the _Creature_ from my book! That's why I sleep in the boot cupboard! That's why I do all the chores! That's why she never told me about my mother or father!" She let out a long noise that sounded somewhere between a sigh and a hiss.

"Boot cupboard?" Figg parroted, trying to pick a single word out of that tirade to respond to. "What do you mean, sleep in a boot cupboard?"

"Because it's where I sleep every night," Christina repeated flatly. "Under the stairs, out of everyone's way. Because Uncle Vernon is afraid of me. Because Aunt Petunia wants my magic to go away, to not be _seen._ That's why they've always hated me! Because I have magic, and none of them do!"

 _Boot cupboard. Where she sleeps._ Figg felt the ground tilting woozily under her chair. She had been living next to this family for how long? Dimly she remembered something she heard Professor McGonagall say to Dumbledore the very night they brought the girl to this house - " _The worst sort of muggles imaginable..."_

"Christina," she croaked out, "Can you show me the cupboard?"

She had a long report for Kingsley. A very long one.

 **End Chapter**

 _ **We get a brief sighting of the Unspeakables this chapter! Nobody - not even Dumbledore or Tom Riddle - know what the hell goes on in the Department of Mysteries. The curtain on that will rise in time - after all, Clank still has Lily Evans-Potter's application on record - but for now, all we know is that they've taken the golem - which apparently belonged to another Potter a looong time ago. Oh Chrissy, you think this withholding of information is bad? You 'aint seen no'then yet.**_

 _ **Read and Review please!**_


	3. Chapter 3

**Everything Has a Price**

 _ **Me: Happy 2018 my lovely readers! May this year be better than the last. I think it will be, because Avengers: Infinity War will hit theaters, but who knows what lies in store, huh? Put your hand down, Sybil. (the Divination teachers looks slightly miffed) Anyhow, I finally got this chapter finished; for some reason it really did not want to get written. However, I finally tackled it over an afternoon and here we are.**_

 _ **Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter**_

 **Chapter 3: Prisha Patil**

Christina wasn't a cruel child, much unlike her cousin. However, knowing that her only known family feared and despised her had cooled her heart, covered it with a sheen of frost that kept any sincere emotion under the surface. She knew to smile, and it did not trouble her to do so nor did it hurt to force her lips upwards, but the gesture in this time had little weight. She knew it would not be sincerely returned; there were no true happiness and no welcome within them. For a child born in the embrace of summer she had little warmth to share or spend upon anyone. Love was not offered, not given freely. It was crafted and created, and no one wished to nurture such a thing in _her_ , the strange, frightening monster girl.

So Christina had no love in her but that which she invested in her creations, and that of her mother (and her father, she presumed as much, since Lily and James Potter had died together) which bound her to life and safety through sacrifice. She was not a cruel girl, but it did not trouble her to think that her words, spoken in anger to her neighbor, would put her aunt and uncle in prison for life.

Unlike most her age, Christina had a good idea of what happened to criminals who harmed children behind the bars of prison. It was difficult for her to imagine strangers rising in righteous outrage on her behalf, but she understood the principle of the matter – even thieves and killers would look with contempt and hatred upon Vernon and Petunia Dursley if she spoke of her mistreatment by their hands. There was a good chance that, given the opportunity, other inmates would attack them, wreak retribution on behalf of the faceless, innocent child they had done wrong.

Christina was cold, and she cared little. It was as it was in the books – as they imprisoned her, she would imprison them.

No, when she brought Figg into the house she was only concerned about hiding the contents of her mother's trunk from prying eyes. There were disguise charms for it that hid the interior at first and second glance, and it was very inoffensive looking, but she worried, because it was all she had of her mother and she did not want to loose what had been so painstakingly rescued. Thankfully, Figg did not question its presence and Christina was able to move it to the attic (repairing the door with a simple charm along the way – the fact that she _knew_ a handful of spells, thanks to her mother's journal, made her giddy) while the old woman inspected the cupboard where she had slept her first nine years away.

There were bloodstains on the floor, from her experimentation with magic. The enclosure stank, and now the baggy, ripped clothes that she had always worn no longer seemed the odd choices (or perhaps oblivious nature) of a strange girl. Upon regarding the stains, Figg demanded to see Christina's hands; once she did she threw an angry fit and would not relent until the young redhead handed over her old pocket knife. Then she took her by the arm and walked her back to her house, where she wrote a letter, tied it to the foot of an owl (an owl! In broad daylight. Christina wondered if the bird was troubled by this deviation from its normal sleep cycle, or if it was magically bred to a different temperament.) and sent the creature off. Then she sat Christina down in front of the television, turned it to the Disney Channel, and went off to the store to buy some cocoa.

Several hours later, Christina looked up from her third mug of hot chocolate (third! _Third!_ Only Dudley got thirds of _anything_ ), to find Figg entering the house with a strange man in robes. Her eyebrows few up. She had seen a few people dressed like this before; a man wearing a nearly identical robe had once bowed before her in a shop as if she were a princess. The man introduced himself as Kingsley Shacklebolt.

Kingsley was a member of the Auror force – the magical equivalent of the police. He was kind and genial and had something of a sense of humor, which Christina appreciated. Vernon could kill a joke stone cold dead and Petunia had no sense of it whatsoever. He talked to her for a while, asked her questions about her aunt and uncle – what daily life was like in the house, what was expected of her, what punishments were like. Christina articulated everything as best she could; Kingsley's expression grew dark very quickly and after a while he told her that he was going to bring her to the magical hospital for a proper check up.

Christina asked if she could bring some of her things with her in a trunk. He didn't give it any thought before saying yes; didn't bat an eye when she trundled the large, worn carrier down the stairs nor did he ask what was in it.

As they made their way to London, she asked what would happen to Dudley. Kingsley reassured her that it was being handled; but she could read the unease in him. He did not fully expect that the request for a magic doctor for the boy would be accepted, with parrots of 'protecting the statue of secrecy' taking precedence. Or the request would have to go through so much bureaucracy that he would die before all the red tape was removed. Christina saw all this in the tightness of his broad soldiers, but she said nothing. Bureaucracy was the same everywhere, after all.

She would cry, sometime, if Dudley was not saved. It would not destroy her; but she would weep. It was more than he would have done for her.

Kingsley lead her into Diagon Alley, and although he was in a hurry he would patiently explain stores and sights as Christina constantly came to a stop to stare at the new world around her. People came out of stores with owls and toads, bookbags hovered along in the air behind the children who no longer wished to carry them, people vanished from one side of the sidewalk and reappeared on the other without breaking stride. The shops had signs of cauldrons and quills, potions ingredients, enchanted plants, and she was only walking down that one street. Christina had expected to find a fully functioning world that belonged exclusively to the wizards and witches; her mother had made it clear they were an insular society and that would explain why no one in her neighborhood believed in magic despite its existence. Seeing it, however...seeing it was gratifying, like it justified her entire existence.

More than ever, Christina was self conscious of her clothes; the hoodie that was a size too big for her and ripped blue jeans being the only things that actually looked presentable. Kingsley had told her to put her hood up and let her bangs hide her forehead; so she wouldn't get mobbed before reaching the hospital and people wouldn't wonder why she was going there.

"Why, sir?" Christina asked quietly. _I'm not just a child, I'm a person of interest..._

"I'd rather not overwhelm you with the publicity of the 'Girl Who Lived' right now," Kingsley said, slightly apologetic. "Everything will be explained in time, I promise, but we must confront the issue of your health first."

 _A Girl who Lived...this must be because of what mother did. Whoever killed my mother and father failed to kill me, though from all anyone can tell he should have succeeded. No-one knows what mother did besides me._ Christina pulled her sweater closer, yet still she shivered. "Why did my mother and father die?" She asked finally. "My aunt and uncle told me they died in a car crash, but that's not true, is it? A witch and a wizard wouldn't die from an automobile accident."

Kingsley tilted his head momentarily, in a way that said, 'well it _is_ technically possible, but not for these two'. "The Potters were brave defenders of Britain. Years ago, we were under attack from a master of dark magic; he wanted them to join his side, they refused. Lily and James were two of the most brilliant people I had the pleasure of knowing, and they fought him on multiple occasions, driving him away."

"Until one day, they lost." Christina said quietly.

Kingsley hesitated, unsure what to make of her blunt observation. He had expected awe, expected sorrow or even wild anger; instead she was almost eerily composed. Of course, the Dursleys were unlikely to have humored any sort of emotional outburst, he recalled darkly; they may have trained such 'childishness' out of her altogether. "Yes," he acknowledged, "but _he_ lost as well. And you survived. Lily certainly would have considered that a victory."

Christina blinked twice and nodded slowly. The man who had murdered her parents had not, in fact, gotten what he wanted. "He won the battle but lost the war." She said. "But why am I being venerated? I...I would have been too little to have done anything." _It was mother's doing, mother rescued me, mother's life force is inside me. If you must worship someone, worship her...until I myself have done something worthy of such acknowledgment._

"You survived," Kingsley explained. "When the Dark Lord wanted someone dead, it was only a matter of time before he killed them...until you. Despite his best efforts, you lived. No one knows why."

 _I do._ "I see." Christina glanced aside. "I do not like this. I cannot possibly match any fantastical image they have built for me over the years. I will disappoint everyone with how little I have to offer right now." _I have the_ shabti _, but surely that is basic showmanship compared to what someone raised in a world of magic would be capable of._

"Hey; don't dwell on that too much," Kingsley responded encouragingly, putting a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. Christina flinched and nearly jerked away, though she managed to stop herself. Kingsley gave her an apologetic look and released her. "Don't worry about 'living up' to anything. You're nine years old; you'll grow into a fine witch in time."

Christina nodded, and they turned the corner to St Mugos then so the conversation came to a sudden stop. Not that she minded; she had much to dwell on. Kingsley, meanwhile, worried over the young girl managing at Hogwarts when simple touches made her flinch. Children, after all, were not often sensitive to delicate needs. He wondered if Figg's report had reached the Headmaster yet; he wondered who Dumbledore would choose as suitable replacement guardians for her before the Ministry got it into their heads that the Malfoys or some other rich but malevolent family would be the perfect for the duty...

 _ **St Mugo's**_

"Are you comfortable? My name is Prisha Patil; I'm going to work with you this afternoon."

Christina regarded the woman in front of her for a moment before saying, "I am, thank you," and settling back against the pillows propped up against the bed's headboard. It was less soothing than the bed in her trunk, but it gave her more comfort than the rough chairs provided by the muggle doctor she (occasionally) had visited.

The nurse smiled at her; she was warm and friendly without projecting too much and having it be overbearing. She was a tall woman – nearly six foot three, which surprised Christina because that wasn't very common – dressed in white. Her skin was dark like roasted coffee; she had long black hair that was tied back in a ponytail and a smile that suited her heart shaped face so well the girl couldn't imagine her frowning. Prisha had set aside a handful of wizard world sweets on the table for after the examination; a reward for a long, dull check up. It seemed odd to Christina, but she wasn't about to protest being offered candy.

Prisha waved her wand over her, blue and silver lights appearing from the tip to form ethereal charts. Christina blinked and viewed the gestures curiously. She hadn't needed a wand to use magic, was a wand an amplifier? A conduit? Or did it narrow and focus magic, act as a sort of cap or surge protector? Or were wands necessary for more specific actions; that would explain her mother's insistence on being cautious when using her tomes.

The doctor was frowning at her results; it was a slight turn of the lips, a sliver crack in her professional demeanor. Prisha then went into her desk and pulled out a vial of clear liquid, which she handed to Christina.

"Drink up," she said simply. "You haven't eaten nearly enough this week."

Christina nodded in acceptance, though it seemed odd since she hadn't eaten any more or less than any other week she had lived. When she drank, however, she nearly gagged and coughed twice. She should have expected as much; the three dentist appointments she'd gone to were proof positive that anything good for you tasted absolutely horrendous. She simply hadn't mastered her gag reflex yet. Prisha smiled sympathetically. "I know; unfortunately there aren't many flavor masks that don't interfere with the core ingredients."

"There must be something," Christina managed when she felt like she could speak again; the concoction burned her throat. Prisha flourished her wand and a glass of water floated into her hand. She smiled hesitantly and immediately downed the entire mug. "Thank you, ma'am."

"Please, Doctor or Miss works just fine. Ma'am makes me feel old," Prisha regarded her charts, the nearly unnoticeable frown reappearing on her face for a moment. "Perhaps there is, but no one's discovered it yet."

 _Put that on someone's to do list, they'd make a fortune if they managed it,_ Christina thought but did not say. She carefully placed the glass on the side table and concentrated on her body. She didn't feel any different, which slightly surprised her – she'd rather expected magical potions to work instantly. Perhaps it had, and her senses weren't acute enough to pick up on it. Or the magic was in motion, but her body was slower to respond to it. Either hypothesis seemed equally valid at the moment, since she had no way of measuring...

"So, you're Hogwarts bound in two years?" Prisha asked, writing notes of some sort with a quill. Christina was surprised that she didn't have an ink pen.

"Um, yes."

"My girls are going as well." Again, the doctor saw something on her charts that weakened her kind, friendly demeanor. "May I see your hands?"

The redhead nodded, offering her slender, pale wrists. Prisha examined the criss-crossing scars upon the white skin, her expression tightening with silent anger. _That's the second time,_ Christina thought. _Why does this displease them? Blood magic is among mother's 'frowned upon' tomes, but surely_ some _people make use of it. It can't be that strange to see._ Prisha released her, murmuring an apology before taking to her notepad again. _Oh. She's upset. She must believe I'm being careless; lacking any formal training, yet still making the attempts._ Christina did her best to look contrite.

This did not seem to ease the doctor; in fact, Christina saw a flash or sorrow and anger in her eyes. _Am I in error? What mistake have I made, Miss Patil?_

Prisha turned on her heel and examined Christina for a moment, before handing her one of the treats from the table – a chocolate frog, the description said – and saying, "I'm going to consolidate my data, then I'll return with your prescription. Just wait here, alright?"

"Yes, Miss Patil," Christina responded obediently, tugging at the edges of the packaged chocolate. She could feel it shivering a bit, as if something was moving inside. So the animal shape was animated by magic? How novel...!

She didn't notice Prisha's sad look intensify before she turned and left the room, so absorbed was she in these new facts of life.

/

Prisha took the precaution of closing the door to Christina Potter's room and walking to the end of the hall before snarling and slamming her fist against the hard white wall. She had been a certified Healer for nearly fifteen years now; this was far from the first abuse case she had been a part of. She had heard children explain scars away, had tried to coax the truth out of women or men who insisted that they had 'fallen on the stairs' or 'had a potion brewing accident' when she was certain that either their parent or their spouse was involved. However, age and experience did not dim the near helpless anger these cases never failed to inspire in her. As a happily married woman with two beautiful girls, repeatedly seeing people betray the trust of those who should be most precious to them was, to her, as incomprehensible as it was rage-inducing. This day was no different. This day may actually be a little worse than usual.

A nine year old with self inflicted cutting wounds? The number of which suggested that this was not new territory for her? This was an unpleasant first. At least, at least, with her other patients, they were at least teenagers. A nine year old, a _child_ , doing this to herself...and there were no tears, barely any emotion other than an apologetic look, like it was her own fault that her aunt and uncle were worthless sacks of dragon shite who betrayed the basic principles of human decency by causing her such harm. Prisha rather hoped, statue of secrecy be damned, that auror Shacklebolt chucked both those worthless muggles in Azkaban – spoken by a woman who was fairly friendly towards muggles, especially by the standards of her social standing.

Prisha and her husband Arjun were both purebloods; Prisha's family having been so for two generations, Arjun's for four. She couldn't _exactly_ claim that they considered their blood status irrelevant, considering it characterized a good chunk of their lives, but they were quite proudly liberal especially by Britain's standards. Arjun had a muggle telescope he'd been given by a half blood co-worker, and it was the source of Parvati's love of astronomy. Prisha, personally, upon hearing the traditional line regarding upholding the statue of secrecy in the modern era (that is, 'all muggles would want a magical solution to their every problem'), noted that 'such talk suggests that muggles are far more resourceful than us, if they run their civilizations without magic?' It had certainly caused that awful toad woman from the Ministry to turn interesting colors.

Taking a calming breath, Prisha straightened up and turned into the room she had been looking for. Christina Potter was going to need nutritional potions to stabilize her health along with a better diet – that was the biggest concern. Her sensitivity to sunlight was not so severe that it needed potion correction; a slow increase of exposure would make that go away on its own. The emotional scars...unfortunately, those weren't Prisha's department, though she had some ideas of how she might tackle them if she had the time. She had minored in psychology while pursuing her medical degree.

 _Come now, Pri,_ she scolded herself. _She's your patient, focus on one problem at a time. Just thank whatever god exists that we found her before she became an Obscurus._

Even thinking the name made her shiver in spite of the warmth of the hospital. _You weren't too late this time. She certainly won't be going back to live with them with this sort of hard evidence against them. She can recover._ Christina's calm, eerie green eyes flashed in her mind. Eyes older than the face they belonged to. _If the Ministry has any sense, they'll take her through the_ proper channels _this time, and we'll all remember that people are_ screened _before they're allowed to adopt children._

Writing up the prescription (who am I giving this to?, she wondered briefly. Does she have any other family?), Prisha schooled her darker thoughts out of her face and returned to the room where she'd left her young charge. Christina was still sitting in bed, staring intently at the chocolate frog wiggling in her hand. She had opened the second package after eating the first. She started when Prisha came in, embarrassment turning her cheeks red.

"I'm sorry," she stuttered. "I just – I wanted to know what made them move."

Prisha felt another twitch, a strong desire to wring the necks of the girl's guardians, and ruthlessly suppressed it. "You don't have to apologize for curiosity. It's nothing too complex, just a pair of charms."

"That's all?" Christina marveled, turning the frog over in her hands. It had stopped moving. "It doesn't last, I noticed."

"Yes, well, charms are short term spells." Prisha explained, coming to a stop next to the bed. "You'll learn all about it when you're admitted to Hogwarts."

Christina gazed at the chocolate frog with such intensity, Prisha couldn't help but smile. That look reminded her of Padma, whenever she was bent over textbooks or construction materials. It gladdened her to see the young woman's natural curiosity hadn't been destroyed. _I'm sure there is much she'll be able to do, now that she has the chance,_ she thought.

It was too bad she only had that old trunk in the way of worldly belongings. Who knew what she'd be able to do with more?

 _ ****~Later, at the Ministry~****_

Christina was half sitting, half leaning against her trunk, one ear tuned to the discussion the Ministry office was holding, trying to ignore her boredom. Once she'd been released from the hospital, Kingsley had brought her to the Ministry and to the legal wing. Since she was a minor, there was nothing to do but sit and wait and stare at the ceiling as bureaucrats threw conniption fits over how the Dursley's arrests would be handled and where she was going to stay in the meantime while her new guardian(s) were sought out. If she'd had a choice, she would have just stayed in the Dursley house after they were removed from it – she knew what to do and what not to do and she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. And more importantly, she would have time to finish and finally _animate_ her shabti. But no, here she was, waiting for hours while men in suits talked in circles.

Did her parents not have a house of any sort? If there was a home, could she not stay there?

It wasn't so much that Christina couldn't comprehend the fuss, and more that she didn't want to deal with it. She was used to going unnoticed, uncared for, so she put great pride in the fact that she managed herself and her place in the world. Being self sufficient was one of the few things she was allowed. Having to place all decisions related to herself in the hands of strange, faceless bureaucracy was _frustrating,_ brought back irrational feelings of helplessness and being trapped. It was enough to make her wish for apathy.

Sighing heavily, fiddling with the straps of her mother's trunk, Christina allowed herself to think of Hogwarts. What would she do, surrounded by her fellow magical children? She'd never had any friends; she didn't know how to talk to other people. She wanted to go – she wanted to _learn –_ but she wasn't sure...it was a _boarding school_. She would _always_ be in the presence of other children, so if they declared her – as she'd always been – a strange monster girl, how would she get any personal solace? Would she be permitted any peace? Hopefully. There were teachers who would, here and there, tell Dudley and his friends off for causing her trouble. And most of what made her 'strange' would be encouraged in a magical academic setting. Of course, she would have to worry over her mother's library – teachers were some of the harshest on contraband...

Then there was this _thing_ she had to think about. Girl Who Lived. Sole survivor of a monstrous dark wizard. Christina sorely wished that someone would _tell_ her what it was that made Voldemort so terrible, so she had some context for this fable of hers and the last ten years of history that had shaped this world's current reality. Yet people were unwilling to even say his name, much less discuss him in detail, despite the fact he was dead.

 _If_ he was dead. Could magic resurrect? Christina had a feeling the answer to _that_ might be lying in those Eldrich tomes her mother had insisted she stay away from.

Christina's thoughts drifted to Prisha Patil. The doctor – Healer, she supposed was the term here – had given only a cursory acknowledgment of her status as the Girl Who Lived (lovely, she had a title she hadn't earned.) and seemed personally offended by the sorry state of her health. Those feelings weren't just a natural prerogative as a Healer, either. She'd mentioned having 'girls' of her own – while that could mean any number of children, Christina idly wondered if there was room for one more.

Her thought process was largely academic. She wanted far away from the implied spectacle of her parent's legacy until she could prove herself worthy of it, and she wanted a parent (or two) who would be somewhat preoccupied so she could have an allotment of time to herself on any given day. Other children would provide such a distraction. It would be problematic if the other children resented her sudden inclusion in their lives, of course, but Christina could endure that. Anything could be easily endured after the Dursleys. Having little personal feelings toward any other family or family friends her parents might have possessed, such a setting would easily be her preferred option.

She wanted to finish her shabti. When could she leave this blasted building?

 **End Chapter**

 _ **Christina's feelings on bureaucracy are mimicked from me, who has had to do a lot of irritating paperwork in the past little while! Anyway, I haven't really done anything with the Patils before, so this is my current experiment with their family. We'll be meeting Padma and Parvati proper next chapter, so I hope you all enjoyed this and are sticking with me!**_

 _ **Read and Review please!**_


	4. Chapter 4

**Everything Has a Price**

 _ **Me: I liiiiive! I live, I live, I have crawled from the depths of Fire Emblem Heroes, the Illiad and Writer's Block to deliver this new chapter to my fans...who have been waiting for far too long, I'm so sorry. Life has been a little bit crazy, but mostly I've just been distracted as hell. I apologize in depth and I swear I haven't abandoned anything. I have a lot of time on my hands now, so hopefully I'll dedicate some of it to continued chapters now that writer's block seems to be broken.**_

 _ **Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.**_

 **Chapter 4: The First of Many**

Being young, precocious, and frustrated with people being unwilling to tell her things, Christina decided in the midst of finishing the runes of her _shabti_ that she wanted to summon the spirits of her mother and father.

She wasn't sure how to go about that yet, but Lily Potter's summoning tools were all safely sequestered in the trunk from when they were used to call Anubis, so she believed that it would be possible. After all, summoning the spirits of two humans would surely be less demanding than calling after a being so powerful it was mistaken by muggles for a god of death.

However, she couldn't tackle such a daunting task without some prior success to provide confidence - so that was why she stood over the metal table at two in the morning, her trunk lying on the floor of a dilapidated room in the Leaky Cauldron, as she prepared to preform the final step in the creation process while intermediately bouncing with anticipation and worrying if her applied secrecy was enough. She'd cast a silencing spell and an extra lock charm on the door to her room as extra precaution, having found the spells in one of the basic textbooks from the sixteenth century. (As odd as it was that her mother had to rescue basic textbooks, those four volumes had been consigned to burning due to having spells considered 'dark magic' listed in their own chapters alongside the 'proper' ones.) She'd pretended to go to sleep as early as eight oclock in order to convince Kinglsey to leave her be for the night and turn in himself, allowing her extra time to work. So in all, Christina thought she had prepared adequately as her mother had impressed she needed to.

Kingsley was yet to look strangely at her; he suspected nothing. Christina was surprised by how relatively easy it had been, especially since the older man was the equivalent of a police officer. He believed that she needed some space in order to be comfortable, which was true, but she'd never been treated with implicit trust before – just ignored. It surprised her, and she wondered why she didn't have a strong feeling in response to coming to realize that. Perhaps it was because she had been numb for so long...

Christina gazed down at her _shabti_ , a smile that almost hurt on her face as she examined it. It was fairly big, just past knee height, and missing half of its facial designs in keeping with the superstition. (Because with magic, the line between old wives tales and reality was a thin one indeed.) The four Runes, animation, movement, learning, and service, were carefully carved and painted in the necessary places. Christina had thought long and hard, during the construction process, on exactly what she wanted this _shabti_ to do for her. Mostly she wanted it to take care of chores and maintenance, and to assist her in her endeavors with further creation, summoning, etc. To that end, she decided that it would be useful if the _shabti_ – which she was tentatively calling Fitz – was able to collect information independently of her. The Service rune, which was meant entirely for Golems and other such non-sapient creations, ensured that it would only do anything for her sake and no one else's. It wouldn't possess full sentience; there was no documented way to create the Soul outside of the miracle of childbirth. It would simply be animated enough to preform her desired tasks.

She had wanted to write "Fitz" in hieroglyphs, but her initial attempts at translation had left her head spinning, and impatience was beginning to set in on finally finishing the project. So she filed that away for next time.

Christina finished painting the curve of the spell circle around the _shabti_ , before grabbing the knife and carefully nicking her hand. It hit an old scar, and she winced, but as she pressed her hand down on the rune and saw all of them light up, none of that mattered.

The blood sizzled and spread throughout the grooves of the runes, pulsing audibly. A warm red glow filled the room; ambient magic came to life and surrounded the vessel offered to it, pouring in like water tumbling into a vase. Christina shut her eyes and focused on the _feeling_ of what was surrounding her; magic wasn't just a trait that could be inherited, it was a _force_ like the wind and the water, with a presence and a great consciousness that only the most powerful of witches and wizards could even perceive. The gentle pressure at the edge of her mind as the hand from which she'd drawn the blood pulsed made itself known to her, the weight and the eerie presence shaking the small girl to her core, spoke for itself – this was a child who would shake the foundations of her world. She was young now, young and not yet grown into her power – stunted, even, from the cruel and thoughtless treatment she had been subjected to – but with time and her passion, she would turn a star into a forge, sew moonlight into a dress, and walk up and down the stairwell of the afterlife.

Christina, for a few seconds, knew all of this, felt the thoughts of magic, and was terrified – terrified and awed. Then, as quickly as it surrounded her, the ambient magic retreated, and the thoughts flew away from her, leaving her blinking and confused. The red light of her magic had softened and dissipated, leaving the shabti lying on the stone...

For a long, painful second, Christina thought she had made a mistake along the way – that she had failed. Then, there was a creak, a soft hum, and the shabti raised one four fingered hand. Then it sat up, and stood, and bowed to its mistress. All its movements were as smooth as if it were a living creature.

Christina shrieked with delight, bouncing up and down like the child she was for the first time in years. _Mother, I did it! I did it!_ Her origami friends all squeaked and jumped in tandem, while the shabti stood idle, waiting for its first commands. _Oh mother, father, I did it! I used my inheritance and I created something! I've become Victor!_ She clapped her hands together and stared at the shabti. "Okay, Fitz..." She thought for a long minute. What would make a good test? "Bring me a glass of milk from the fridge!"

The shabti – Fitz – immediately slid off the table and walked purposefully towards the kitchen. Christina, still rocking onto her toes, blanketed the fire in the brazier before leaving the forge and collapsing onto the couch, exhausted yet jubilant. A moment later, Fitz strode towards her, a glass of milk in hand. There were no splatters of milk on its clay body, and after she had drunk from it she put it down and glanced into the kitchen. No milk on the floor, no broken glasses. Fitz had preformed its task perfectly.

"Yes," She gasped, stumbling backwards. Her coordination was damaged by exhaustion, but she couldn't bring herself to care. She had truly done it. Fitz was functional. "Yes!"

Neph chirped and flew in a circle around her head. Dazed, Christina turned towards Fitz. "Guard the bottom of the stairs until morning." She instructed. "After that, refile the books that have been translated to English and separate them from those which aren't, keeping them in groups according to mother's files."

Fitz gave a simple nod before walking towards the hallway. Grinning, Christina finished her milk and placed the glass in the sink. _What should I make next? A golem? An enchanted shield, like that of Achilles? A sword? Or maybe I should summon for a familiar. That would teach me some of what I would need to be familiar with to speak to Anubis myself...or to Athena!_

Christina, after reading the first three books of the Illiad, was firmly convinced that Paris was an idiot for not giving the golden apple to Athena. Who gave up all the wisdom of the mortal realm to get _married_? Especially to a woman who already had a husband! If he'd chosen wisdom, he could have been one of the greatest Heroes in living history, and if it was truly so important he could have cunningly swept Helen to his side in a way that wouldn't bring all of Greece down on his head. Really, what on Earth had he been expecting, just running off with her in the middle of the night when he had been welcomed into the king's home as a guest?

 _A familiar will require getting a pet; I suppose I can't really pursue that until after my living arrangements are settled._

Climbing the ladder until she emerged from the trunk, she carefully closed the lid and slid it next to the bed. Yawning immensely, she collapsed unceremoniously on the cold, flat mattress she had been provided, her eyes flickering to the bedside table where the newest text she was reading sat innocuously, its massive form seemingly slightly bigger due to the number of pages with dog ears.

That copy of the Illiad was her father's. It amused Christina that her father; a privileged, die hard sports player who her mother had complained vehemently about until she was sixteen, eventually came to read such a famously long story enough times for the book to be so worn. She wondered if he kept journals as well, but in a different place – maybe in one of his vaults? She would like to read something her father wrote; her mother had left her everything she had, but she had nothing of her father's so far except for the broom hanging on the wall, and the messy nature of her hair. _(Her mother spoke quite fondly of this trait in James in later sections of her diary_.) She hoped to find something once she could see her family property.

Closing her eyes, Christina surrendered to her tiredness, a few lines from songs she'd heard on the radio repeating themselves in her mind until she sank into the depths of sleep.

* * *

 _She was standing in the doorway of a small, two story cottage. It was late in the day, the sun sinking over the horizon, and in the distance there were children laughing and crying 'trick or treat!' as they ran from house to house. She turned around to see a figure in black approaching the gate; a child fled from him after asking him something and the gate swung open without him touching it. She stood rooted in place as he approached her; his head was largely covered by a hood but she could see his eyes; bright red and possessing narrow slits like a reptile. She trembled and knew right away that this was Voldemort, the man who's name was never spoken, the Man in Black. He walked through her as if she wasn't there, the door opening with a muttered spell._

" _Lily! Lily, he's here! We've been betrayed – Peter – I'll hold him off! Go!"_

 _She gasped, and ran into the living room, following her father's voice. Just as she passed through the doorway, there was a great flare of green light, and Voldemort glided wordlessly from the room, leaving behind a dead body. She approached it timidly, afraid that he would be manged like Dudley had been. But James Potter's body had nary a mark on it; instead he was staring silently at the ceiling with his wide brown eyes, an expression of fear and determination left permanently on his face. As she turned her head to the right, she noticed a pair of wands lying on a couch side table on the other side of the room. And in that moment it dawned on her that this had been no noble final struggle, a pitched battle between equals. This had been an ambush, something expedited by another; Voldemort had attacked when her parents had thought they were completely safe._

 _Guided by the logic of the dream – or perhaps by Morpheus himself – she left her father's body and the wands, tracing the steps of Voldemort as he ascended the stairwell. Why was he walking slowly, she wondered. The gesture seemed so arrogant; he could move faster, she knew this somehow, yet he merely walked. Perhaps her mother couldn't escape; perhaps he had set up magic ahead of time to ensure that._

 _The door to her room burst open. Her mother stood, whirled, her hands gripping either side of the crib which contained her baby. Voldemort entered, wand pointed at her. She hurried past him, stood in front of her mother even though she knew it would do nothing._

" _Not my baby," Lily Evans-Potter whispered. "Never."_

" _Stand aside, you silly girl." The words threw her. What? He was offering to let her mother go? It was implicit in his words, yet it didn't make sense. Wasn't her mother one of his great enemies? Why would he offer to let her live?_

" _No! Not my baby. If there's anything human left in you, have mercy – take me instead – "_

" _Humanity? I am a God! Avada Kedavera!"_

 _She looked away, ashamed of herself for it yet not wanting to see the murder. Her mother screamed and then there was a thump as her body hit the wooden floor. Her child self began to cry, frightened by the loud voices and sounds, as Christina turned her head back to see Voldemort approach the cradle. If he could see the blood rune, he gave no sign of it. He spoke the spell again, but the green light froze in mid air after it left his wand. For a split second, it hung in mid air – Christina could_ feel _the man (creature)'s shock and confusion – and then exploded outwards, the green swallowed by a brilliant red light._

 _An awful inhuman scream filled the air as Voldemort's dark form disintegrated, burnt to cinders. Christina threw up her arms to shield herself from the blinding red light – she could have sworn she saw a dark speck in the center of it, a sphere of light coated in darkness like thick paint dripping around a marble, rushing towards something anything that might tie it down – and then there was nothing but red._

* * *

"-stina! Christina!"

Christina vaulted up in bed, a scream caught in her throat. Kingsley was standing at the foot of her bed, concern in his face. She blinked rapidly, keeping the tears away – she never, _ever_ cried in front of other people, she refused to be humiliated that way anymore – and groped blindly for her book. Grabbing it, she pulled it towards her chest; holding something tangible helped her re-establish reality. "Bad dream," she mumbled, staring at her knees. She was glad that her voice remained steady. "Did you come to wake me?"

"Yes. You seemed very distressed – are you alright?"

 _No. My parents, my parents were murdered – I hadn't really thought about it that way before, hadn't_ really _thought about it, but I just_ saw _it. My parents were murdered, my parents were stolen from me and I was forced to live with the Dursleys. I was forced to sleep under the stairs, I was kept away from magic, I activated something that may well be the death of Dudley, because my parents were murdered and stolen from me._

Peter. Who was Peter? Was he dead, was he being punished for this? What had he done to lead Voldemort to her family? What had they done to him, to make him betray them so completely? Her heart burned, roared, she hadn't felt so angry since she realized the depths of her aunt's pettiness, her cousin's shallow heart and her uncle's brutish fear. Peter betrayed her parents, and her.

 _I thought I knew that, but knowledge doesn't come with feeling until you've experienced something. And now I have. Oh Morpheus, I praise you, I didn't understand before you showed me. This must be why I was born so wise. This must be why I was born with power. To avenge my parents upon their betrayer, to build a world in which no one can be murdered in such a way again._

Christina blinked when a familiar smell penetrated the haze in her mind; Kingsley was offering her a mug of hot chocolate. "Here. Take it easy," He said gently.

"Thank you." Where had he even gotten that so quickly? He must have had some on hand before he came to wake her...what for? Well, perhaps it didn't matter. She drank slowly, focusing on the rich taste as she wrestled her emotions back under control. Her trunk rattled ever so slightly; Fitz was programmed to sense her distress in case she needed assistance. Thankfully Kingsley didn't notice; his attention was solely on her.

"Better?" He asked when she finished, handing him the mug.

"Yes." _A little_. At least she had stopped shaking. Her mother, her father, they had both been thinking about her before they died. And they had been murdered. It hadn't been some romantic final battle, like in the Illiad. It had been an ambush, a murder. The thought made her feel so cold. "Did I wake you?"

"No, I was just coming to see how you were. It's nine in the morning, now." Christina tried not to sigh. Five hours of sleep wasn't quite enough for her young body. She supposed she would have to nap through the next legal proceeding. It was amazing how a committee could keep minutes and loose hours. She had seen as much yesterday. "Do you need more time?"

"I don't want to go back to sleep," She mumbled. She didn't want to watch her mother die again. Ah, Morpheus, why did she have to watch them die? Why not leave that memory with the toddler who had not understood what she was seeing, allowing her some innocence? "What are we doing today?"

"I thought you might want to do some shopping." Kingsley explained with a small smile. "Get yourself some new clothes, a toy or two...something to take your mind off things."

"Oh...thank you." She blinked. "Wait. I don't have any wizard money."

"That's not a problem; you have a trust account along with your parent's money at Gringotts. We can go and make a withdrawal; your key had been given to me since I'm your chaperon."

It hadn't been given to him by the Ministry, Christina realized sharply as she looked at his face. Someone else had had it. A friend of her family's? But then why not just say as much? That train of thought made her remember something abruptly – something she had been pointedly reminded of in notes. "Ah...I'll get changed, then. I'll only be a minute!"

"There's no rush." Kingsley gave her a reassuring smile and left the room.

Christina stared grimly at the door for a moment afterwards – whoever it was that gave Kingsley the key, he had full trust and confidence in them. Whatever she asked him about them, he was going to give her a biased answer if he gave her one at all. Hopefully it was jut someone in authority, perhaps a person her mother had entrusted to in case of line theft. Christina would have to come up with some sort of plan if that wasn't the case.

She'd never been confrontational before, but these were _her mother's things!_ Her father's things! _Her_ things, now, the only connection she had to the people who had died for her! She wanted them _back,_ damn it, she wanted them safe and secure and with her. Whoever this person was, they'd better not be expecting this key back. In fact, they were in for an unpleasant surprise if they were anyone but someone mama trusted!

Getting changed in seconds into jeans, a ripped red long sleeved shirt, white socks and sneakers, Christina opened the trunk and quickly slid down the ladder. "My health is fine. Continue your previous orders," She told Fitz, who had been waiting at the top of the ladder for her. It was a sign of how seriously she was taking this that she only felt a momentary shot of giddiness as her first creation continued to obey and function without any problems.

Darting into her mother's room, she opened the desk and grabbed the top most manila envelope – her mother's true will. _Tell them you have evidence of line theft._ Thank goodness the notes had made her remember! Grinning fiendishly, she stashed stashed in an inner pocket of her overcoat and scampered back up the stairs and back into the guest room. A quick glance to the side as she did so showed that Fitz had done significant work throughout the night – there were piles of English books all separated by category set aside from the rest. Grinning, she shut the trunk and locked it tight before letting out a long breath and schooling her face into calm indifference.

Exiting the room, she allowed Kingsley to lead her out of the building; she pulled her hood up as usual and swept her bangs to cover her scar. It truly agitated her, how much people stared and pointed when they knew who she was. She was a private creature, she had never been paid any mind before so the sudden scrutiny felt invasive and even threatening. She wondered what they saw when they looked at her and none of the answers were welcome. A savior, a champion against evil, a figurehead – all of this had been built up without her saying a word, without her doing a thing, (her mother and father had saved her, her mother's magic destroyed Voldemort!) while she had been locked away and separated from her magic, ignorant of her parents, of the man who tried to murder her, of _everything_! Thinking of this sent a fresh wave of resentment towards Petunia and Vernon. How dare they put her in this position! How could they not at least warn her?

Perhaps they couldn't. Perhaps Voldemort's name was hexed, enchanted; perhaps saying it brought trouble to the doors of those who spoke it, and _that_ was the true reason everyone still feared to speak it even years after his death. The golem proved that some magic could last long after the person themselves passed out of the mortal realm, and if Voldemort was truly so strong – _he called himself a god –_ then he could possibly do something of that sort. The thought did little to ease her bitterness.

What was she going to do at Hogwarts? If the children all looked at her the way their parents seemed to – _like an icon, a heroine –_ how was she to manage being among them? She would know if they just wanted her fame or to elevate themselves; people's eyes never lied, not to her. But she would be estranged once again, perhaps even still by fear – fear of what being the 'destroyer of Voldemort' meant about her power...

Shaking her head, Christina pulled her trunk closer and kept to Kingsley's side, head down and body language quiet so she slipped into the crowd with few people noticing the girl among them as different, if they noticed her at all. She was thinking too much. The mind could not build a model without some data. She had endured such things before...

The atmosphere of Diagon Alley agreed with Christina. Perhaps it was the casual use of magic, but she felt at least welcome here – in Little Whining, things were so ordinary, that any use of her magic felt as though she were disturbing the natural order of things. Here, a person such as her was exactly how the houses were built, who the stores were for, who had walked on these cobblestone streets long before she had taken her first breath. The only thing that struck her as odd was how...well... _old_ all the construction seemed. The town rather looked like something constructed in the mid eighteenth century, if not earlier. There wasn't a single building that looked as though it may have been built at the turn of the century. She wondered why that was.

"Gringotts is the primary bank of Britain," Kingsley explained as they turned the corner. "It's run by goblins. They're a proud and somewhat prickly people, so be as polite as possible when we enter." He pointed towards a large, castle like building that sat in the center of the street, right at a fork in the road. Christina blinked and craned her neck to look up at it.

"Goblins?" She echoed. Her mother had mentioned them briefly in her journal, when she discussed buying some ancient and forbidden tomes through back channels. Her father had "come from money" (so it had been written), and while he worried about her mother's quest for forbidden lore, he had supported her in it. Apparently, the goblins had assisted in the search once or twice, because one of the tomes her mother had been questing for contained spells that had been used in the construction of Gringotts buildings.

"Yes indeed," Kingsley said with a small smile. "Shall we go in?"

It was so odd, how he kept asking her questions like that. Do you want to do this, is it okay if we go to this place. He was trying to make her comfortable, she knew, but all Christina could think when asked them was to shrug and say yes – she'd never been given the option to say no before. "No" had never been a permitted response. She did want to go, but saying 'yes' was partially out of habit.

They crossed the street and stepped into the bank. Christina felt the weight of the envelope and frowned as she shot a careful look at Kingsley. She wasn't sure she wanted to show this to the teller with him here; she had a feeling he'd be reporting that back to whoever had been holding onto her vault key. Her mind worked at finding an explanation that seemed innocent enough as to why she would have it as they walked through the large front doors and into the ornately decorated bank.

Christina looked about and was seized with curiosity. Sure enough, all the tellers were goblins, and she couldn't see any human staff when she scanned the room – just human bankers looking to make various transactions. Did no humans work here at all? Were they barred from it? Was there a complication in the relationship between the nations that made a mixed staff impractical? The goblins didn't seem to outwardly disdain dealing with humans...she wondered if they dealt with others as well. Who else would have human style holdings? Dragons? She nearly snorted at the thought. There was some wishful thinking.

Kingsley stopped in front of a teller who was unoccupied and said, "Excuse me, sir. Miss Christina Potter would like to access her vault."

The goblin looked up from the coins he had been counting, then leaned over his desk to frown down at her. He was tired, probably had to work through last night, and his frown had deepened slightly upon seeing Kingsley's attire. _He must not like dealing with the Ministry,_ Christina thought. "Hm. Does Miss Potter have her key?"

"Yes, of course." Kingsley took the key out of his pocket and handed it to the teller. The goblin looked sharply at him as he took it, and Kingsley didn't seem to register this as a mistake – him having her key, that is. Christina took a deep breath and stepped forward.

"Um, excuse me sir," She said softly, pulling the envelope out. The goblin's eyes jumped to her, curious – he wasn't used to humans calling him _sir_ , it seemed. "I found this buried under a number of things in my aunt's desk. It had a note that said, 'refile this with the bank in the event of Line Theft.' I-I don't know what that means." She was careful to stutter, not wanting it to look like she had thought about this at length.

Kingsley looked at her in utter surprise, while the goblin immediately took the envelope from her, narrowed his eyes at the handwriting, and said, "I see. This way, please."

"Your aunt had that?" Kingsley said. His body language read complete bafflement. "Why?"

"I don't know," Christina answered, looking at her shoes. _My mother had it, because my mother was not a fool._ She hurried after the teller, Kingsley following along behind her, just confused. For now, at least.

The teller lead them behind the desks and to a cart where another goblin was waiting. "This is Griphook," He explained, after handing the envelope to his companion and having a short conversation with him in hushed tones. "One of our account managers. He will show you to your trust vault."

Griphook instructed them to buckle in, and then the cart took them into the winding depths of Gringotts. It looked more like a mine than a bank, but Christina could see why this place was considered almost unassailable; the winding cart ride was the only way down, there were no roads and no easy ways to climb the steep cliffs among other things. She was pretty sure she saw trolls here and there, armed with clubs and lances. The cart slowed to a stop and Griphook lead her to a large metal vault that he unlocked with her key, then gestured for her to enter.

Christina gasped when she saw what was inside; there was a table with large columns of gold, silver and bronze. It was the only thing in the room but she had never seen anything like it before. "This is your trust vault." Griphook said. "There are many other things connected to your family cared for by Gringotts, which you will have access to once the matter of potential Line Theft is dealt with."

"Thank you sir," Christina said automatically; since he was standing to her right she didn't see the pleased look that crossed the goblin's face at the simple gesture of respect. Hesitantly she stepped over to the table and opened the medium sized pouch she had been given. "H-How much should I...?" She looked at Kingsley for help.

Gently the older man explained galleons, sickles and knuts to her, and they left the trust vault with a heavy pouch but not so much as to be extravagant. Griphook told her, just before she left, "The Ministry will be informed of our findings regarding the will in short order."

"I suppose I should have expected Lily to keep a backup will," Kingsley mused as they left Gringotts behind them. "She was a very practical, intelligent woman." Christina hid her smile. As long as he didn't question it, he wouldn't ask questions that lead to the trunk leaning against her leg. "Now, where shall we go first?"

"I want new clothes." Most importantly, she was tired of wearing hand me downs from Petunia or things the woman had pulled dirt cheap from the bargain bin. She wanted things of her own. She would keep these clothes for when she worked in the forge, wouldn't want to wreck any thing that was _hers_ while she was working. That thought made her smile, she would have things of her own now – not things that belonged to Dursleys or even to her mother. _Hers_. And they wouldn't be taken from her...

"Alright then."

Kingsley lead her away from the general area and to the far west of Diagon Alley. Christina was disappointed to discover that there were no muggle clothes stores in the magical area; she'd have to go back to muggle London later on. However, there wasn't _nothing_ to be found in Diagon Alley; the store there had dresses and some eighteenth century style formal wear. Christina liked one of the simple red dresses she found, though she didn't care for much else she saw. It was all so stiff, and none of it was suitable for working or doing anything practical.

However, things looked up soon enough. Kingsley dropped her off at a book store, saying that he had to answer a call and that he'd be back shortly. Christina looked among the bookshelves gleefully and began to explore, her trunk trundling after her.

She'd been there for about twenty minutes before she found a book she didn't recognize; Dark Lords from the past century. It was a history book, and she stood on her toes to pull it loose, hoping that it would tell her something about Voldemort. However she lost her balance upon freeing it and tumbled backwards, crashing into someone who'd been walking behind her. The person yipped – it was another young girl, going by the voice – and staggered, grabbing Christina haphazardly to prevent her descent and keep her own balance.

Christina quickly got to her feet and turned around, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..." She trailed off in surprise; this girl looked a lot like Prisha. She was tall for her age, a solid inch taller than Christina herself, with thick black hair, dark skin and obsidian eyes. What surprised her most was that the other girl didn't seem infuriated by her clumsiness, instead she seemed surprised.

"It's okay, I'm fine; are you alright?" Unsure how to respond, Christina just nodded. "That's good. They should really bring step stools for the upper shelves." She frowned upwards before focusing on Christina's face; her hood had fallen backwards when she lost her balance and with her hair askew, her scar was visible. "Oh, that's..." Christina winced, bracing herself for the inevitable barrage of questions, "You're...Christina Potter?"

"That's my name, yeah."

"I can't believe I met you by being a landing pad!" The girl giggled slightly, while Christina felt her face burn with embarrassment at that. However, her companion seemed to notice so she quickly stopped and said, "My name's Padma. Padma Patil." And then she offered her hand.

Christina blinked twice, before cautiously taking it. "I really am sorry. I just wanted to get this so badly..."

Padma waved it off. "Ah, that was nothing. Parvati crashes into me on the way down to breakfast every other day of the week. She's my twin sister, but sometimes I feel like she's years younger than me; she always has to run everywhere!" She was smiling as she said this; Christina knew straight away that despite any number of complaints, Padma loved Parvati dearly.

She felt strange when she realized this. There had been no one to worry over her like that, no one she could share that sort of feeling with. Dudley had the possibility, when they were babies, to offer that sort of connection, but he was too spoiled and too self involved to forge such a thing. Christina felt a twinge of longing in her heart, the frost sheen it had become accustomed to burning her ever so slightly.

"-you read much?"

Christina shook off her revere when she realized Padma was asking her something. "Yes. I love reading; anything really, but I particularly love stories. Frankenstein is my favorite."

Padma looked contemplative. "I don't think I've heard of that one," Christina paled and gaped at her, how could anyone not know about Frankenstein? "Perhaps I should remedy that?" Padma giggled again at her expression; hearing that laughter devoid of mockery was strange as well. "You've lived muggle for years, but I've never really been in that world except for a vacation. We could swap books."

"That sounds like fun." The words surprised the red haired girl, they left her lips without her really thinking about it. Padma looked delighted, and she lead her over to a table where there were a number of books already waiting for them. That was where Kingsley would find them later, heads bent together over a copy of Frankenstein.

 **End Chapter**

 _ **So, references to Morpheus and Athena because I've come to the sudden realization that I know little to no mythology outside of Ancient Greek/Roman, Egyptian, and some European (mostly King Arthur related). I only know Amaterasu by name and the only Mesoamerican myth I've ever read is the tale of Two Flint. (beat) I might need to do a little homework on that, even if just for references as Christina starts digging into her powers more.**_ _ **Also, Padma's finally introduced, and Christina is getting an inkling of how deeply separated the muggle and magical worlds are.**_

 _ **Read and Review please!**_


	5. Chapter 5

**Everything Has a Price**

 ** _(sigh) I don't know what to say, except for sorry. I've been pretty busy lately, and having to deal with the remedial period of University after the months long strike has left me with barely any time to rest, much less write something fun like this. I wanted this chapter to be longer, but having to write three tests in a row that all had time limits really dampened my enthusiasm to do much of anything. It didn't help that this chapter really didn't want to be written. However, I've finally put it together and I hope you all enjoy it._**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.**

 **Chapter 5: Mother's Gambit**

After sitting in the same chair for six hours without pause, Christina decided that if she ever had to set foot in a legal facility again it would be too soon.

These men discussing her future had never once asked her what she wanted or even what her opinion of _anything_ was, yet she had to be present and sit in silence as they debated. She wasn't allowed to listen in on the reading of her mother's real will; whatever she had written, it had sent the bureaucrats in a uproar. She'd heard a lot of arguing behind the closed doors, and what little she could understand was legal jargon that was very difficult to parse. What she did understand was 'a challenge?', 'fostering, not adoption', and 'paranoid woman' – the last of which made her want to kick someone, because her mother had died for not being paranoid enough, and how dare they judge a woman wanting to protect her daughter?

She'd thought it would be over after the will reading – hah! She'd been forced to sit in a legal courtroom, listening to the discussion of the "extradition" of the Dursleys and their hearing, for hours on end despite the fact she was only allowed a vocal testimony and wouldn't even stand in public before the court. Probably the worst part was when a toad-like woman in a pink cardigan stepped forward to give a speech – if it could be called that! She used more redundant phrases than a dictionary, twisting her sentences into riddles in a way that was supposed to seem profound and intelligent, but was actually empty and meaningless. It truly was 'the sound of fury, signifying nothing'. Which was fitting for a hollow, ambitious social climber like her. She didn't give a fig about Christina, she just wanted the Ministry to look good.

The talking, ah gods the talking...it was like being surrounded by a horde of birds, pecking and squawking in an endless cacophony of meaningless noise. When Kingsley finally rescued her from the courtroom and took her out of the building, Christina had felt as though she were an inch from going mad. As she stumbled out of the red phone box that served as the Ministry's entrance, she took back every irritation she'd ascribed to her mundane grade school – this was so much worse!

"Can we leave?" She asked, looking up at him with faint desperation. "Please, Mister Kingsley."

Kingsley looked sympathetically at her. "Of course. It's a madhouse in there, isn't it?"

"It's a madhouse everywhere here!" Lord, she should not be getting hysterical, but she was so _fed up_ with all of this. She almost wished she was back in the cupboard so she could have some peace, solitude. "Everyone stares at me like I'm an exhibit in the zoo; they all talk _at_ me and not to me! I feel like I'm a freak show; please, can we leave? I...I want to be alone!"

Kingsley's expression cycled between concern, confusion and uncertainty before he nodded. Christina, gripping the handle of the trunk as though it were her only lifeline, dove into the crowd and made her way back towards the Leaky Cauldron, where the Floo passage awaited, shouldering past dozens of wizards who all gasped and shouted and tried to get her attention. The blood was roaring in her ears. She hated this so much; where was the glory in merely _living past her second birthday?_ That's all she'd done, her _mother_ had saved her, her father had saved her, these people were either misinformed or willfully ignorant! And for people in the Ministry to be attempting to look good in front of her...What were they expecting of her?

What would be the price of failing to live up to the image of this saintly child savior?

The thought sat heavy in the bottom of her stomach; her excitement about reaching the world she'd belonged in had become distant indeed. Christina scrambled into the Floo and screwed her eyes shut as Kingsley called out a word she'd never heard before - "Hogsmeade". The green fire roared around them, briefly taking Christina back to a time she'd spilled oil on the stove resulting in flames leaping up and singing her hair. Wizard travel was hard on the stomach, she decided as she stumbled out of the fire place, feeling slightly sick. Kingsley offered her a hand to regain her balance.

Christina blinked a few times and looked around. They had entered a small pub that was occupied only by a handful of people sitting at various tables, talking quietly; teachers, all of them, taking a late afternoon meal before grading papers. She looked inquisitively up at Kingsley.

"Welcome to Hogsmeade." Kingsley said kindly, his voice pitched low so as to not draw attention to them. "This is a small village next to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Since its out in the Scotland countryside, most of the news regarding your arrival won't have broken here yet; we should be able to enjoy some peace and quiet."

"Scotland?!" Christina gasped, spinning around and staring at the Floo entrance. She had come into Diagon Alley via the Knight Bus, so this was the first time she'd used this sort of travel. "But we were just in London! Ah...how far does Floo travel go?"

"Depending on the connection? It can take you from one side of the country to the other. As far as I know, the only distance it can't cross are lakes and oceans." Kingsley responded.

"How does that work? How can we travel so quickly?"

"It's magic." Kingsley couldn't help a small smile when Christina pouted in response to that explanation – only briefly, but that reaction made her seem more the child she truly was than the melancholy mini adult she usually was. "I'm afraid I don't know the specifics; you'd have to ask one of the operators sometime." He glanced at the counter. "Would you like to try a butterbeer?"

Christina tilted her head. "What's that?"

Butterbeer, as it turned out, was a very sweet drink that was sort of like a milkshake with extra buzz. (Christina had a vague idea of what milkshakes tasted like thanks to that one time a girl in the cafeteria dumped one on her head.) Kingsley let her choose a table near the back and went to the desk alone so she wouldn't have to engage with anyone. The man at the head of the pub was very old, tired and sour, and had a face that read of a lifetime of regrets. Christina briefly wondered what had happened to him over the years before lowering her eyes to the table again; there were a handful of students and teachers going here and there after all.

Christina took another sip from her mug and gazed intently at it for several moments, instinctive caution warring with her newfound confidence. "Mister Kingsley?" She asked at last. "What happened during the reading of my mom's will? The people sounded really...well, indigent and confused and sort of panicked. No one would tell me anything when I asked." She paused. "What's going to happen to me?"

Kingsley thought for a moment to find out how best to answer. "Well, your mother's real will contained something no one was expecting." He explained. "It had a clause that stated that in the event of her will being tampered with, everything except your inheritance is revoked. That included lists of prospective guardians the Ministry might have put together in the absence of your parent's chosen guardian."

"Who was that?" Christina asked. "It wasn't Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon? Why did I never meet them?"

"It seems not." Kingsley said hesitantly. "Originally, you were going to life with your godfather, Sirius Black. However..." his eyes skittered away for a moment, and Christina strangled her annoyance knowing that something was being withheld from her again. "...Black was convicted of spying for You-Know-Who during the war. In any event, your mother has set up a test to ensure that your guardianship did not default to someone without your best interests at heart."

"How?" Christina asked.

Kingsley smiled faintly. "Apparently, your mother dealt with spirits to some extent." Christina's heart jumped; her heel pressing against the trunk under the table. "She communed with a fae spirit who is currently haunting the back yard of the cottage where...it happened." _Where they died. You can say it. You've already told me as much_. "Fae are famous for being tricksters; they can see into people's hearts and use that knowledge to play nasty pranks, lure young witches and wizards into the wild never to be seen again...they can be quite capacious, and dangerous to deal with. But they uphold any covenant made with them; if your mother asked it to find an honest guardian for you, then you can trust whomever it passes."

"...She was allowed to do that?" She asked cautiously. Had public perception of certain 'forbidden' magic changed during the war?

"When it comes to protecting her family, almost anything is permitted. Family magics are more precious than gold to many in our world." Kingsley sat back a bit. "Some things are frowned upon. Fae, depending on their temperament, can be _very_ dangerous. If your mother hadn't been the clever woman that she was, communing with one could have ended very poorly for her."

 _So Mama said. I need to find her other notebooks, she has to keep her notes on summoning in one of them. Then I'll be able to see her._ Christina fidgeted. "How often do spirits appear before people?" She asked.

"Spirits rarely show themselves directly, unlike ghosts," Kingsley said. Christina blanched a bit, _ghosts?_ , "and they rarely interact with the physical world. Friendly spirits mostly watch, though they may bend luck in your favor if they take a liking to you. The...more malevolent among them have to be invited to manifest, and once they are, they rampage around until they are dispelled again."

Christina looked down at the table again. "So people are going to the spirit trial right now?" She asked, carefully moving the conversation away from spirits. "I don't have any other family?" Father didn't have any family?

Kingsley shook his head slightly. "I'm sorry; I know this is difficult for you..." he offered platitudes and comforts, but Christina didn't bear them any mind. Words rarely meant anything. Instead she frowned at her mug, wondering what sort of person the fae would choose for her to live with.

She found herself wishing she could talk to Padma again. The other girl had suggested a number of books to her, like The Beetle and the Bard and The Lion and the Serpent. She had shown great interest in Frankenstein when Christina had shown her the book, and they had discussed a couple of their favorite scenes from various books when Kingsley had come to collect her for that circus of a legal event. Christina wasn't sure she wanted a _friend_ , but she was cautiously optimistic about potential ties to Padma; at the very least, the other girl was interesting. Christina had been surprised by how much she'd enjoyed their conversation; maybe it was because she'd spent so long surrounded by people who either had nothing interesting to say, or were too intimidated to say much of anything.

What she had picked up from this miserable day was that the magic of binding and communing wasn't wholly looked down upon. That was good; hopefully that meant it wouldn't raise too many eyebrows to be interested in the subject. She could take a little head-shaking and disapproving looks, as she honestly didn't care what anyone thought as long as they didn't try and investigate her. She wanted people to keep their distance. Aunt Petunia had always wanted people too look at her, admire her. She would have thrived in this circus, surrounded by sycophants and artificial admiration. That was enough to dislike the whole mess on principle, though Christina's feelings ran deeper than that.

A guardian...fostering...Christina stared at the bottom of her mug contemplatively. All she wanted was for them to let her have her own room, and to occasionally leave her to her own devices. Yet all of this nonsense was leaving her cynical. So maybe mother's fae would keep any opportunist from taking her as a charity case. And? She was still going to be hounded by this "girl who lived" myth until her dying day, wasn't she? It was going to affect how any guardian looked at her.

She wished Voldemort had never existed. She wished her parents were still alive. She almost wished she was a muggle. (Muggle, muggle, muggle. No matter how many times Christina tested the word, it sounded infantile – as if she were speaking of baby animals, not humans.) But wishes never helped anyone. Whatever happened next, she would just have to live with it.

* * *

Christina didn't sleep much that night; since the stress was keeping her awake, she'd descended into the trunk and read _Darkest Wizards of the Past Century_ until the early morning. Voldemort, the self styled 'pureblood' master of the Dark Arts, had raised an army of like minded individuals in an attempt to take over Magical Britain and remake it in his image. A classist of the highest order, a psychopath (he was repeatedly noted as having killed minions for failing him) with no mind for collateral damage (the International Confederation of Wizards had to chip in to keep the magical community from being exposed to muggles during his rampage, since his attacks were so indiscriminate), and a man obsessed with power, Voldemort had cultivated an image of an unbeatable, undying champion of magic, until the night he killed her mother.

After reading these sections, Christina became uneasy; her mother was born to non magical parents. Clearly there was an undercurrent of disapproval towards those who weren't born to magical parents, if Voldemort could raise an entire army using that as a recruitment hook. At that point, she returned to her mother's journal and located the one letter she hadn't opened yet.

It was quite illuminating. Technically speaking, Christina was a half blood, since her mother was muggleborn and her father was pure blood. HOWEVER, her father was a Potter and the Viscount of Blackmoor; his family tree went back for nearly twenty generations, and as the sole living Heiress, Christina would be treated as a pure blood by high society and accorded certain special privileges. However, the letter warned her that many would see her as an upstart half blood and she needed to be careful who she associated with.

Christina rubbed her temples, muttering every Russian curse she'd overheard that one time Vernon rear ended someone in traffic. She resisted the urge to bang her head against the headboard of the bed in the Leaky Cauldron to avoid breaking it. This was ridiculous. _All_ of this was ridiculous. Half blood...muggleborn...what was the _point_ of these ridiculous labels? Magic was magic; blood magic wasn't affected by who your parents were – muggle blood could be used in blood rituals as long as a wizard was preforming the magic. So what in the flying nine hells was this?!

There was a knock on the door. Christina rubbed her eyes, closed the book and swung her feet over the side of the bed to rest on top of her trunk. "Mister Kingsley?" She asked. "You can come in."

Kingsley stepped inside and smiled at her. "The fae has chosen, Christina. I've been told to show you to your new guardian."

"Oh," Christina murmured in surprise. "I see." Grabbing her hoodie off the chair and putting her shoes on, she grabbed her trunk handle and warily followed Kingsley down towards the entrance. _I will manage,_ she told herself. _I managed with the Dursleys, I shall manage with whoever comes to me. Even if they just want to be seen taking care of me, even if they just want me to like them and feel grateful and care for them later on, I can manage that, I always have..._

Just outside the Leaky Cauldron, Kingsley greeted a tall, dark skinned man with black hair and warm, friendly brown eyes. He wore simple dress clothes and offered her his hand when she met his eyes. "Hello, Christina. I'm Arjun Patil; I'll be taking care of you for now." He smiled at her startled expression. "Padma is excited to talk to you again."

 **End Chapter**

 _ **Read and Review please!**_


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